- It don't take much to sound dope.

My tone is trash, but you get it though.

I mean, who doesn't want the funk?

But what is it exactly?

We all know funk when we hear it.

♪ Hittin' it ♪ (funky music) Oh yeah, funk.

♪ Your love is on the one ♪ - Oh, that's funky.

(funky music) Funk.

(bass plucking) Today I'm gonna look at the backbone of funk, the bassline.

How do funk bass players transform a few simple notes into something that makes you wanna move?

Now, I'm not a bass player, but with the help of a great teacher, I'm gonna try to sprinkle a little bit of funk- It's like that special little seasoning.

Into this.

(bass strumming) - I feel like that's the first song everybody learns in their music class, the "Hot Cross Buns."

- What is a hot cross bun?

- I don't know.

- Here's the thing, funk seems so simple.

There's not a lot of complicated harmonies, not a ton of notes, just groove.

Just listen to the first couple bars of "Give It To Me Baby" by Rick James.

(funky music) Simple, right?

But funk isn't just what you play, but it's how you play it.

So, to help me break this all down, I called Nik West.

She's an amazing bass player.

She's worked with Prince, the legendary slap-bass pioneer Larry Graham, and she's gonna try to turn me into a bass player.

I'm trash on the bass, but I'm gonna give it a try.

Now, air bass, yeah, I'm the true.

I'm the truth at air bass though.

♪ Do do do do ♪ Actually playing the instrument, mm-mm.

Do you prefer four strings, five strings, or?

- I grew up in the church where the guys would bring basses to to the pulpit and they were just fat necked, six string basses.

Yeah, I was like, I gotta do that.

- The claw.

- That's all I was doing was playing the six string, playing chords.

But then, I met Prince and he's just like, "You got way too many strings.

Larry Graham only needed four."

That's what he said.

- [Dr. Vincent] Most of us credit Sly Stone and Larry Graham for laying out how to make a song where you walk away humming the bassline to the song.

Oh, that song that goes ♪ Bump bump bump bump bump ♪ That's just what they did.

And they did it ahead of everybody else.

- James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament, for most people, this is funk.

The syncopated groove of the late 1960s and 70s.

(funky music) ♪ You've got a real type of thing going down gettin' down ♪ - Bootsy Collins belongs on the Mount Rushmore of funk.

He took the bottom and turned it into this psychedelic wiggle.

I've accepted funk is an underground thing.

It's underground and everywhere at the same time.

- Most of us know it's part of the foundation of hip-hop, but funk didn't stop there.

It has evolved, shapeshifted, and embedded itself into the DNA of modern music.

Check out "Nightmare" by Knower.

It's jazzy, futuristic funk features one of today's brightest and most quilted stars on bass, MonoNeon.

I love MonoNeon.

(funky music) And of course, Thundercat is bringing his giant six string bass to the front of the stage.

(funky music) Funks rhythm-heavy aesthetic also shapes entire electronic subgenres.

Producers like Kaytranada, weave funk-inspired basslines into modern beats.

(funky music) ♪ You keep on takin' from me, ♪ ♪ But where's my ten percent ♪ - And you know funk knows no boundaries.

Anderson .Paak recently teamed up with the King of K-pop, G-Dragon, on the track "Too Bad."

♪ Baby girl ♪ ♪ Too bad for me ♪ ♪ There you go ♪ ♪ Toot that ass for me ♪ ♪ All I want ♪ ♪ Is in arms reach ♪ - But no matter when or where the funk was made, all funk starts with James Brown.

K-Dot knows.

♪ Oh yes we can ♪ ♪ Oh yes we can ♪ ♪ I can dig rappin' ♪ ♪ I can dig rappin' ♪ - James Brown changed music forever, starting in 1964 with his album "Out of Sight."

And just like funk, he did something that seemed so simple.

He moved the emphasis of the beat from the two and four to the one.

- The one.

- The one?

- Keep hitting that one.

- James Brown found out that if you hit the one strong that what comes after that is funky.

- So instead of songs sounding like 1, TWO, 3, FOUR.

James Brown made it sound like ONE, 2, 3, 4.

ONE.

(rhythmic humming) Mm.

Why is bass your thing?

Or like what excites you about the bass?

- I heard Michael Jackson's, "You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" ♪ Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom ♪ ♪ Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom ♪ I didn't even know what instrument it was.

I said, "Dad, what is that?

What is that instrument doing that low sound?"

He's like, "Baby, that's a bass."

And I'm like, "I wanna play that."

It's the way that the basslines and the bass just makes you move, makes you feel inside that that drew me to it.

- Okay, so what about the bassline makes it funky?

- Simplicity.

Like we want the funk.

♪ Boom boom boom ♪ ♪ Boom boom boom boom boom ♪ "Head" from prince.

♪ Bow boom boom bow ♪ ♪ Bow ♪ ♪ Boom boom bow ♪ See how simple those basslines are and it just makes you like, ah, you know, just wanna like groove.

A lot of bass players get into and a lot of just musicians in general, since we're talking about funk, get into, well, let me add extra things in here because there's all of this space that nobody's playing in, but space is a note and space is the key to creating funk music.

- That's a bar right there.

- Yeah.

- Space is a note.

- Absolutely.

Quote me on that.

- Okay, I'm gonna break this bass out.

Nervous.

So, okay, the idea behind this lesson is we're gonna try to take the simplest song, "Hot Cross Buns" and try to sprinkle some funk into it.

(Nik laughing) So, how would you go about putting some funk on a hot cross bun?

♪ Hot cross buns ♪ ♪ Hot cross buns ♪ Oh yeah.

♪ Ha ha ha ha da da da da ♪ ♪ Dah dah dah ♪ - We gonna hot cross bun it.

- So, the one has to be loud and proud.

The one is super important because that is what establishes the fierceness of what's getting ready to come next.

You can start sliding in before we play the song one, two, three, four, one.

♪ Buh uh uh ♪ - That's tough.

- If I take everything out of the song and leave the one.

So if I go.

♪ Mm tak ti tik buh ♪ (bass playing) - Uh, that's the breakdown right there.

- Like people are still dancing.

- That's still hard.

- And you just got that one.

Ow!

And I'm taking something and I'm funking it up.

I'm thinking like a drummer.

Some of the best bass players in the world, we are drummers.

We just happen to play the drums on four or five or six strings.

- I think every instrument should be thinking like a drummer at some point.

- I agree.

- But that, I'm a drummer so I can't even say that.

(bass strumming) - So, do you hear how long we're holding the notes?

- Yeah.

♪ Wah wah wah ♪ ♪ Wah ♪ - Snore, snore, snore, right?

So, the first thing I would do is I would make them staccato.

So, I would take these notes and I would shorten them up.

So.

(bass playing) Just play the.

(bass strumming) Right.

So, as you are playing these things staccato, we're gonna throw something in there called ghost notes.

Ghost notes are notes that are felt, but not necessarily heard.

(bass strumming) That's a ghost note.

- Okay.

- It's more of just like a rhythmic, whatever y'all call it on the drums.

That's what it is.

- A rhythmic, a thing.

- A thing.

So let's do this, let's do this, let's go, let's go.

(bass strumming) You can add an octave.

(bass strumming) - Ay!

- You're feeling something and you don't know what it is that's making you say, "Oh, that is so funky.

And she's only playing three notes."

- Yeah.

- It's the ghost notes.

It's the ghost notes.

It's coming back up.

(bass strumming) That make sense?

- That makes perfect sense.

Nik, I appreciate you working with me today and teaching me.

- Of course.

- We'll figure it out.

- Okay, come on.

- Keep it simple.

(funky music) Hit the one, leave space.

Think like a drummer and keep it simple.

The simplicity of funk is what makes it so special, so versatile.

And it's why funk didn't just influence modern music.

It is modern music.

(funky music)