New Electro Funk Single out now

21 May 2022

Glitch This single cover by Redtenbacher's Funkestra — *Glitch This – Redtenbacher’s Funkestra*

RSB records releases ‘Glitch This’ by Redtenbacher’s Funkestra

Listen on your favorite listening/download digital platform

THE STORY

This new single presents the listener with a different flavour from what they might expect from the the Redtenbacher’s Funkestra. To start out with – I played and programmed the majority of instruments, notably drums. This immediatly pushes direct sonic influences of 70s funk drums to the wayside and entering the electro funk arena. Spotify has a playlist called ‘Jazztronica – where Jazz meets Electronica’ and I really like the ‘to the point’ description.

BEAT FATIGUE

To me this Jazztronica journey started a few years back when I first came across GLITCH FUNK, specifically the glitch funk of BEAT FATIGUE, a Dutch electronic funk producer.

Although the music was largely programmed it was incredibly funky and also featured great guitar playing on many of the tracks. I thought this was rather intruiging and started to look into it. Beat Fatigue shares my love for guitarists like Larry Carlton and John Scofield and was running a large funk band in the Netherlands for a while.

However, he got frustrated with band politics and the complications of managing a band. This is when he retreated from the band circuit and discovered DJing and Ableton. I bought his whole catalogue at Bandcamp at the time and enjoyed the musicality of his programming, playing and unbelivable sounds, especially the zany, gurggling, mega funky bass lines, blistering with grooves and sonic varations – far more involved than simply sticking a filter plug-in or the like on the bass.

Check it our for yourselves HERE.

I decided to get in touch with him and ask him if he wanted to create some Glitch Funk remixes of some of my tunes. This resulted in the digital EP release of ‘Redtenbacher’s Funkestra re-imagined by Beat Fatigue’.

I really love what Beat Fatigue has come up with and we hooked up again to create anoter remix EP called FONKY. This also includes a Gltich Funk re-imagination of ‘Dance’ featuring vocalist Helena May.

PROGRAMMING

Inspired and influenced by his re-imaginations I wanted to try to create a glitch funk tune myself. I customarily record my Jazz funk tunes with long standing drummer Mike Sturgis – however, on this ocassion I programmed the drums using samples. Using samples, loops and creating grooves is something I have always done – however, for the most part only to create demos for my tracks, rather than using them ‘for real‘.

I always play guitar, bass and keys on the demos I create – and I have done many of those over the decades, yet again, generally they are only heard by the musicians to get an idea of the songs before I record with them using ‘real’ instruments.

Finally, the horns – yet, again different to how I normally go about having horns on my tunes. My standard way is to write the horn arrangement the ‘old way’. I notate the horn arrangements with Sibelius and get the guys to play them. Sometimes I mock up the horn arrangement with samples – not so much for the guys to copy the demos but more for me to get a good feel for what the whole arrangement is going to sound like.

HORNS

On this ocassion I sampled saxophonist Simon Allen and trumpet player Sid Gauld. To be precise, I sampled what they played originally on this track and then turned it all upside down by improvising with the samples – this created completely different result than when using my standard way of arranging horns as explained. Inspired by Beat Fatigue I also played around with the registers of their instruments and pitched certain notes and lines up and down an octave and experimented with doublings until I found something that sounded cohesive in my mind. Apart from the ‘pedal to the metal’ saxophone solo by Simon Allen, the two of them actually never played those horn lines together.

FINITONE

I think the end result is true to the Funk the way I hear it, yet it is wrapped in complete different sonics to what I normally do, i.e. playing with a live band. It feels great to not feel limited about one approachto create Funk or Jazz Funk tunes – played, programmed or hybrid productions – it’s all just different means for the same end result – to write original and enticing (Jazz) FUNK.

Finally, I hope you’ll like the new single, reaching further a field to what you might be used to from the band and myself.