Here’s how Sly Stone hacked tech to change funk forever

As the world has lost another musical genius, Sly Stone will remain in our minds for his significant contribution to the industry, where he used innovative approaches and technologies to create unique sound and forever change his genre.

Indeed, Sly Stone, musician and founder of the 1960s band Sly and the Family Stone, recently passed away at the age of 82, and he left a far-reaching influence on music and artists like Prince, Kendrick Lamar, The Roots, Chaka Khan, Andre 3000, and many others.

Sly Stone and his musical revolution

According to a recent Hulu documentary, Stone “fused analog soul with electronic innovation, crafting a sound way ahead of his time.” The key to his transformation happened in 1969-1970 when he ran Stone Flower, an independent record label and production company with his manager David Kapralik.

At the time, Stone started experimenting with musical ideas and a Maestro Rhythm King MRK-2 drum machine, becoming the first pop musician to use one on an album. And it was all due to his erratic, drug-fueled behavior that made his drummer Greg Errico stop taking his calls and Stone had to take up the MRK-2 to replace him.

Interestingly, drum machines weren’t really intended for use on studio recordings but to accompany live organists and other musicians, as well as to provide a beat to write to for songwriters – basically like a metronome. However, for Stone, they became an inspiration.

As Oliver Wang put it: 

“With their weirdly burbling toms and anemic snares, the Rhythm King’s sounds don’t resemble ‘real’ drums. The Latin preset rhythms, which fascinated Stone, felt woozy and off-kilter. Here was an unexpected foundation to an emergent funk aesthetic that Stone would eventually share globally on [the album] ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On, but Stone Flower is where he first got to experiment.”

Today, music innovation continues, sometimes in the form of recreating old machines, like a baroque music ‘computer’ called the Arca Musarithmica, which Levi McClain made using the plans of a 17th-century Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher.