Children of Production

My four-year-old daughter is currently super into “Children of Production” from Parliament’s classic 1976 album The Clones of Dr Funkenstein, their followup to Mothership Connection. If that album called down the holy mothership, this one introduces you to its occupants. This is the kind of groove that sounds effortless until you try playing it.

Here’s a live version, a bit more spaced-out:

On the studio version, the groove announces its subtle strangeness in the very first half second of the track. It begins with Jerome Brailey’s drums, Bootsy Collins’ bass, and (I assume) Bernie Worrell’s electric piano bumping together on the downbeat. Except they aren’t playing the downbeat, they’re playing the sixteenth note before the downbeat. The downbeat itself is silent! Then the rest of the band kicks in on the eighth note after the downbeat. That is a lot of rhythmic information to pack into a single beat’s worth of musical time! Let’s unpack.

The first rule of funk is that everything is on the one, meaning beat one, the downbeat. Jazz musicians might do all kinds of fancy misdirection around the downbeat, but funk musicians do not. There’s a whole song on The Clones of Dr Funkenstein about everything being on the one. Funk has plenty of rhythmic complexity, but you can expect that everything will come together on each downbeat.

Except that is not what happens in “Children of Production.” Starting at the top of the tune and every four bars or so afterwards, the band shifts the downbeat a sixteenth note early. Instead of accenting the strongest beat in the bar, they are accenting the weakest one, the beat that you least expect to be accented. Furthermore, Brailey and company heighten the rhythmic dissonance even further by using wide sixteenth note swing, so the second sixteenth note in each pair is very late. The one before the downbeat is really really close to being the downbeat, but it’s just sliiiightly ahead of it. To be able to cleanly execute this kind of precise microtiming requires serious musicianship. To do it so effortlessly and casually requires exquisite musicianship. To do it while tripping on acid, as these musicians famously were in the studio, is another level entirely.

I used the Groove Pizza to help you visualize what’s going on here. The basic template of the groove is the “backbeat cross,” kicks on beats one and three, snares on beats two and four, and hi-hats on each eighth note. It’s the same beat as the one in “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson, just slower. In “Children of Production,” Jerome Brailey alters the basic framework by dropping a few hi-hats, adding a few hits, and most importantly, anticipating the first downbeat in each phrase. Here’s a simplified representation:

Here’s a more accurate transcription in notation. I marked the anticipated downbeats in red:

Noteflight still doesn’t quite convey the nuances of this groove. Jerome Brailey hits the hi-hat on the anticipated sixteenth note hard and a little open, and then closes it at the precise instant of the downbeat, cutting off the sound. Instead of a big loud kick thump and cymbal crash like you’re expecting, you hear a half a beat’s worth of dead silence. It doesn’t sound showy, and it doesn’t disrupt your ability to dance to the groove, but like I said, try playing along with it and you will find it hard to get it right.

The great Fred Wesley wrote the horn chart, and it might be my favorite one he ever did. Here’s a transcription of one of the breaks. How sweet is the doit at 1:30?

Like all P-Funk classics, there are a lot of vocalists on this track: George Clinton, Calvin Simon, Fuzzy Haskins, Raymond Davis, Grady Thomas, Garry Shider, Glenn Goins, Bootsy Collins, Debbie Edwards, Taka Khan, and Gary Cooper. That’s eleven top-shelf singers, with eleven different voice qualities, ranges, and singing styles. There’s so much color to their singing that it’s easy to lose track of what they’re singing. Most of the lyrics are seemingly silly P-Funk mythology, but then we get to this line: “We are deeper than abortion, deeper than the notion that the earth was flat when it was round.” Deeper than abortion! What could George Clinton mean by that? I can’t find any explanation, from Clinton or anyone else. If you can help me interpret, please let me know.

Meanwhile, my kids cheerfully walk around repeating the next line, “We’re going to blow the cobwebs out your miiiiiiind, we’re going to blow the cobwebs out your miiiiiiind” in the Clones’ theatrical singing style. They don’t understand the abortion line, and I’m in no hurry to explain it. For now, it’s enough for them to just enjoy the groove and the soundscape on top. We can unpack the imagery later.