I remember when David Letterman was still on NBC, he had a replacement drummer replacing Anton Fieg for one night. He introduced the guy as “the inventor of the disco drumbeat,” and the drummer played a couple of measures of that classic bass/hi-hat sound. IIRC, he got a some of boos. Can’t recall his name, of course.
I don’t know - to me, new wave is Talking Heads and Blondie. They used synths on occassion, but they didn’t base their music on it. Basically, they were punk with more intelligent lyrics.
But you can make disco with any kind of lyrics, even gore ones. As a proof, here’s Cartilage Holocaust by the Carnival In Coal whackos.
Funk beats tend not to be “four-to-the-floor,” with the bass drum playing much more on off-beats, and snares often ghosting and accenting on beats in between a counted beat and an “and.” The drum grooves tend to busier with the interplay between kick and snare. Here’s the James Brown “Funky Drummer” beat, for instance.
Even in that Parliament example, which is close to disco in its sound (and disco borrowed a lot from funk) you can hear the bass drum has a choppier pattern than disco. Or here’s a page with some examples of what I think of when I think of funk beats. There’s also a lot more snare or open hi-hat accenting of off-beats than in disco, and quite often the hi-hat work in funk can get quite intricate.
Heh, I was going to say that Disco could be defined as modern techno but using more primitive instruments, then I realized it’s hard to tell between some New Wave and Disco using that criteria (but of course much or even most New Wave doesn’t have a dance beat.)
Then I thought that maybe Disco is modern techno with primitive instruments, plus funk. Then I thought that I Will Survive should certainly be classified as Disco but it isn’t very funk-influenced.
So basically, I don’t know either. A lot of times it’s hard to tell between Disco, New Wave, and Funk (and sometimes Techno. The aforementioned I Will Survive would just need a very slight update in the instrumentation to sound exactly like 90s dance techno.)
New Wave is a very flexible term. New Wave isn’t just about synthesizer and dance beats–that’s just the synthpop side of New Wave. Acts like The Knack (“My Sharona”), the Pretenders, Blondie, the Police, etc. are or were all considered New Wave. All New Wave is is the rock music that superseded punk. There were basically two main branches: post-punk, and New Wave, and even there there is a lot of controversy over the terms. Basically, post-punk became applied to the less pop-oriented bands like Gang of Four, Wire, Joy Division, and those kinds, while New Wave stuck to the more pop-oriented forms of music I mentioned above. Synthpop is just one part of New Wave. It does not define the (very loosely defined) genre.
In my opinion, I qualified my answer sufficiently to take care of the more straight-rock-instrumentation side of New Wave.
I’m just using your statement as a jumping off point. I could have just as easily quoted Bearflag’s comment with exactly the same answer.
Some aspects of New Wave can be thought of as a fusing of punk & disco. Duran Duran is one example of this.
Beat, schmeet: you guys are full of crap. It’s the clothing that makes it disco. Bell bottoms, butterfly collars, flowered shirts and leisure suits. Yeah, baby!
I do think the leisure suit is, ironically, responsible for the demise of the suit worn as leisure. Before disco, occasionally you’d still see someone in a relaxing or informal setting wearing a regular suit, although it was on the decline. But then everyone switched to leisure suits, and no one went back to regular suits when disco went out except for maybe some pretentious preppies.
Keeping it more on a “feel” level, I think this is similar to the dividing line between pop and rock. One might say that the Beatles were pop and that the Stones were rock, but the Beatles sometimes rocked out and the Stones sometimes were mellow.
To me, I guess disco represents love and funk represents sex. One is more emotional, the other is more illogical and funny. Both are very danceable.
I once heard it described as “Disco is for dancing vertically. Funk is for dancing horizontally.”
Other points about funk vs. disco: In funk–especially the James Brown variety–the most important beat is the one. Traditionally, African-American musical forms stressed the backbeat–the two and the four. In funk, everything comes together on the one, and quite often the two and/or four are displaced or omitted. So, while there is often a lot of interplay between snare and bass in some of the harder varieties of funk and accenting of off-beats or displacement of beats, it all resolves on the one. You can hear it in the “Funky Drummer” beat I linked to earlier. While the snare on two and four are still there, they predominant beat is the one.
And here is the legendary Bootsy Collins explaining being “on the one” in terms of bass. Also, note that in the funk groove, other than “one,” the notes he’s playing are mostly on off-beats in between eighth notes.
Other differences between funk and disco is that funk tends to be even more groove-based than disco. There’s often a sequence of several different grooves that go together that abruptly switch from one groove to another. (See James Brown again for examples of this.) The swells and builds between verse and chorus and bridges you get in disco aren’t as prevalent in funk. It often just goes from one groove to the next. I also find that funk tends to hang on the groove longer than disco.
Was it Bill “Sticks” Downey? 
You da’ man **puly **- all really well explained. And I wondered why I confusingly thought of you as a drummer, not a keyboardist ;)
It really does come down to fundamental “rhythm footprint” - moving from the 2 and 4, to a 4-on-the-floor, to a “hit the one” approach is one of the, if not THE defining characteristic.
I would also add the “size of the pocket” - i.e., does that genre of music allow for flexibility in the beat so a major rhythm component like the drummer or bassist or guitar or keyboards can “hang back” off the beat a bit (“playing behind the beat” - kinda like Ray Charles coming in with the vocal at the last second). With rock, you can play behind the beat; with disco, not nearly as much - it is much tighter and when you move from disco to techno/house, it is positively digital/military/on-beat.
Funk? If someone in the mix isn’t playing behind the beat, it ain’t funk ;). It has the biggest pocket of the genre’s being discussed…