So next time you open your DAW, skip the vintage compressor plugin. Load up the General MIDI sound set. Crank the tempo to 112. And let the ones and zeros get funky.
Here is why you should feed your clavinet through a 5-pin DIN cable. In live funk, the drummer rushes the fills and drags the snare backbeats. It breathes. funk goes on midi
Funk asks you to move your feet. MIDI asks you to move your mouse. When the two meet, we get something that isn't nostalgic and isn't futuristic—it’s parallel . So next time you open your DAW, skip
But here is the secret:
When you hear a MIDI funk track from 1989 (think early NES soundtracks or Japanese City Pop demo tapes), you aren’t hearing a failed attempt to sound real. You are hearing a successful attempt to sound fun . Funk is defined by dynamics: ghost notes, accents, stabs. And let the ones and zeros get funky
So why is the niche genre of suddenly un-ironically awesome?
It is the sound of a robot who has studied James Brown for 10,000 years. It has no soul, technically, but it has so much structure that your body doesn't know the difference.