Expanding on the information from his award-winning Code Of Funk book/audio package, and drawing from his experience with the legendary Tower Of Power, world-renowned drummer David Garibaldi's new Lessons: Breaking The Code DVD (Hudson Music) provides some of the most insightful instructional content ever available on the subject of funk drumming. The comfortable sound and feel of the funk style have become the rhythmic foundation of modern rock, pop, R&B and hip-hop music, and in Breaking The Code Garibaldi offers an overview of the general concepts and techniques used to create funk drumming's characteristic sounds and infectious grooves while showcasing his own contributions to the style.
REVIEW 
On the 2-hour and 20 minute DVD, Garibaldi demonstrates and dissects the patterns he used on such Tower of Power classics as "Page One," "Pocketful Of Soul", "Back In The Day", "East Side" and "The Oakland Stroke." Garibaldi takes the time to discuss the back-story of each track, the fundamental relationship between the kick, snare and hihat, the differences between ghost-strokes and accents, and how to incorporate hybrid/permutated rudiments and displaced patterns in practice and performance situations. Garibaldi also explains how to use the multimedia DVD-ROMs included with The Code Of Funk to create loops of user-selected musical phrases and remix Tower of Power's studio tracks for lessons, practice and play-alongs.
Breaking The Code combines a straight-forward lesson approach with multiple camera angles that clearly show the feet, hands and kit to put the viewer one-on-one with the master drummer and teacher. Although the DVD can be used as a companion to The Code Of Funk (Hudson Music) as well as two of Garibaldi's previous books, Future Sounds (Alfred Publishing) and The Funky Beat (Alfred Publishing), a 47-page printable eBook is included, which covers all the material on the DVD and includes full transcriptions of each song.
Highly recommended for intermediate to advanced students, as well as teachers and professionals desiring to further expand their funk drumming vocabulary.
