For this post, I will have a look at two contrasting songs that fall under the funk style of music: “I Want To Take You Higher” by Sly and the Family Stone, and “Overtime” by Knower. For this discussion, the live session recording of “Overtime” will be used as the original recorded version is far more electronic and synthpop in style.
I Want To Take You Higher – Sly and the Family Stone
The first song in this comparison is “I Want To Take You Higher” by Sly and the Family Stone. The song was first released as part of their 1969 album “Stand!”, which featured a number of the group’s most famous tracks including “Sing a Simple Song”, the title track, and “Everyday People”. The album itself sold incredibly well and is regularly regarded as not only the band’s best work, but also one of the best albums of all time. Notably the album was released not long before the group’s famed performance at the Woodstock festival. As with a vast majority of the group’s songs, the songwriting duties were handled by frontman Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart.
The song is a deviation from the band’s lyricism on the rest of the “Stand!” album, and instead deals with music itself and how music makes people feel rather than delivering a specific message. This can be noted from the opening lyrics of the track “Feeling’s getting stronger / Music’s getting longer too / Music is flashing me”. The overall feel from the song, derived from the driving drum beat, prominent bassline and lyrics give the feeling that the song was made to dance to and to energise the listener. The repeated phrase “Higher!” also gives a chance for audience participation, most famously shown at the group’s Woodstock performance where Sly Stone encouraged the audience to join in with the chant.
In terms of composition, the song is not overly complex and follows a general verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure with some instrumental parts in between for solos on different instruments. The song opens with a blues influenced guitar line, which leads into the first verse. The transition between these two sections can feel awkward as if the vocals are offbeat, but the final bar of the guitar line is in 3/4; this can cause the rhythm to feel off if the listener feels the entire section as 4/4, which the song predominantly adheres to. The song sticks to the key of A minor, and never deviates from the tonic chord of A minor either. However, the instruments all seem to play off the A minor pentatonic scale which gives the song a bluesy and funky feel throughout. The intro guitar part occurs several times in the song as well, which helps to break the piece apart and give clear indications of when a new verse is about to start; it also retains its odd timing as well of two bars of 4/4 and a single bar of 3/4. The drums play a groove throughout that has the snare landing on beats 1 and 3, and during the chorus a heavily distorted bass guitar plays on beats 2 and 4; these together give a strong driving feel throughout this part of the song.
“I Want To Take You Higher” features a large array of instrumentation, which are typically found in funk music from the late 1960s. The instruments include guitar; bass guitar; drums; saxophone; trumpet; and harmonica. Each lead instrument has its own moment to shine throughout the song, with mini solos thrown in throughout its duration. The lead vocals are handled by four members of the band, and the verses see them trade off lines before all coming together for the chorus; the rest of the band also contribute backing vocals for this as well. There is a mixture of both syllabic and melismatic singing, with Larry Stone notably going from modal to falsetto voice in the middle of a syllable in each of his vocal parts.
“Overtime” – Knower
The other song featuring in this comparison is “Overtime” by independent electronic group Knower. The group is duo consisting of vocalist Genevieve Artadi and multi-instrumentalist Louis Cole; the latter of whose work includes collaborating with Snarky Puppy and Vulfpeck amongst many others. Knower formed in 2009 after Cole was introduced to Artadi by a mutual friend, and have since seen their popularity skyrocket; so much so that they even supported Red Hot Chili Peppers for some shows in July 2017. While the duo’s studio releases are more electronic sounding than anything else, their full band lineup that features in live performances and their live sessions on YouTube falls under the jazz-inspired funk genre. The song “Overtime” originally features on their 2016 album “Life”, and the live band session was uploaded to YouTube on 27th August 2017; this version of the song went viral not long after its release and, as of April 2019, has nearly reached 3 million views.
In terms of purpose, “Overtime” seems to cover both showcasing the performers’ talents on their respective instruments while also energising the listener as it is quite a fast and upbeat track. The lyrics also portray the message of someone speaking to a potential partner that they need to put in the effort for the relationship to work, and that they will not wait around for them. Lyrics such as “I’m the frosted side of a mini wheat / You know that I’m so sweet” indicates that the person knows their worth, and encourages their potential partner to “not waste this opportunity”. As the song is quite upbeat, it can also be seen as a good song to dance to as well.
The overall structure of “Overtime” follows a general verse – pre-chorus – chorus format, with an instrumental section towards the end which sees the tempo decrease and increase drastically. It starts out in the key of F# minor, with the verses modulating to G# minor. However, the bass descends down a pattern of F#, E, D#, D, C#, B and A# before repeating; the presence of the major thirds (A#) and major sixths (D#) give a strong mixolydian flavour to the song. Adding in the chromatic passing tone of the D means that all the notes from the bass line come from the F# bebop major scale. The song seamlessly modulates from F# minor to G# minor by using two stabs – an F#m11 and a E7sus4 – before then using an inverted C# major chord to lead into the G# minor key change. This works as the next section is also in a mixolydian mode, and C# major is the fourth degree of G# mixolydian. The chords in the song are complex, and very few basic triads make appearances; when they do, they are inverted or embellished with other notes nearby in their respective scales. There is syncopation across the entirety song, with the bassline in the main refrain section having a 3 over 4 polyrhythm for the most part before repeating the rhythm after two bards. This helps to give the song a strong groove, and also gives the song a very jazzy feel. As mentioned before, the song is already quite fast overall until the instrumental section, where during the keyboard solo the song slows down considerably. Afterwards, it speeds up to even faster than the original tempo, with a pause before this happening to add to the dramatic effect of the change. The vocal hook (“You’ve got my heart working overtime”) is repeated throughout the song and appears predominantly in the pre-chorus. Towards the end, this hook is repeated numerous times while also being doubled up on the saxophone for emphasis.
Instrumentally there is a relatively small group of instruments: vocals, keyboards, saxophone, bass guitar and drums. The bass guitarist uses a lot of muted notes throughout, which is extremely common in funk music. Although still mainly a funk song, the addition of keyboards helps give the song a more modern and electronic sound. Artadi’s vocal line uses a fairly narrow ranged syllabic singing style that still sits quite high in her vocal register, and ad-libs some sounds between her lyrics. She also adds in some “oohs” that have had a noticeable amount of reverb added on during the instrumental section to help fill in the space that the keyboardist left while performing his solo. The playing level of each player is extremely high, and to get such a live performance so tight would have required an enormous amount of skill.
Comparison
As with the previous blog post about folk music, it is extremely fascinating to listen to two songs that sound extremely different to one another upon first listening, yet both can easily be labelled as funk music. Both songs have vocal lines that are narrow in range, and both feature the bass guitar prominently throughout. There are a lot more differences however: for example, “I Want To Take You Higher” features a wider brass section and an electric guitar; whereas “Overtime” lacks the guitar and has one saxophone player. “Overtime” heavily features keyboards and synth, which “I Want To Take You Higher” does not have at all as these were not very common in the late 1960s. The saxophone player also features more prominently in “Overtime” with it having its own solo in one section, and the overall playing from every musician in the song is far more advanced than what can be seen in “I Want To Take You Higher”. Finally, “Overtime” is notably much faster than the Sly and the Family Stone track, even when it slows down in the instrumental section.
Will Listens To Music 