page_title: Funk
section_title: Harmony
hierarchical_section_title: Funk / Characteristics / Harmony
caption_attribution_description: English: A thirteenth chord "collapsed" into one octave results in a dissonant, seemingly secundal[1] tone cluster. Created by Hyacinth (talk) 04:56, 3 July 2011 using Sibelius 5.
context_page_description: Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of soul music, jazz, and rhythm and blues. Funk de-emphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a drummer, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Like much of African-inspired music, funk typically consists of a complex groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. Funk uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths.
  Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure, and the application of swung 16th notes and syncopation on all basslines, drum patterns, and guitar riffs. Other musical groups, including Sly and the Family Stone, Kool and the Gang, Parliament-Funkadelic, B.T.
context_section_description: Funk uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths. Some examples of chords used in funk are minor eleventh chords (e.g., F minor 11th); dominant seventh with added sharp ninth and a suspended fourth (e.g., C7 (#9) sus 4); dominant ninth chords (e.g., F9); and minor sixth chords (e.g., C minor 6). The six-ninth chord is used in funk (e.g., F 6/9); it is a major chord with an added sixth and ninth. In funk, minor seventh chords are more common than minor triads because minor triads were found to be too "thin"-sounding. Some of the best known and most skillful soloists in funk have jazz backgrounds. Trombonist Fred Wesley and saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker are among the most notable musicians in the funk music genre, with both of them working with James Brown, George Clinton and Prince.
  However, unlike bebop jazz, with its complex, rapid-fire chord changes, funk virtually abandoned chord changes, creating static single chord vamps (often alternating a minor seventh chord and a related dominant seventh chord, such as A minor to D7) with melodo-harmonic movement and a complex, driving rhythmic feel. Even though some funk songs are mainly one-chord vamps, the rhythm section musicians may embellish this chord by moving it up or down a semitone or a tone to create chromatic passing chords. For example, "Play that funky music" (by Wild Cherry) mainly uses an E ninth chord, but it also uses F#9 and F9.
  The chords used in funk songs typically imply a Dorian or Mixolydian mode, as opposed to the major or natural minor tonalities of most popular music. Melodic content was derived by mixing these modes with the blues scale. In the 1970s, jazz music drew upon funk to create a new subgenre of jazz-funk, which can be heard in recordings by Miles Davis (Live-Evil, On the Corner), and Herbie Hancock (Head Hunters).
caption: A thirteenth chord (E 13, which also contains a flat 7th and a 9th) About this soundPlay (help·info)
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