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Styles Lesson Four
Funk Guitar Lesson Objectives Objectives • • •
To develop a tighter, more staccato approach approac h to rhythm guitar. To gain a better understanding of chord voicings used in Funk. To begin building a vocabulary of Funk rhythms.
Funk music contains some of the most exciting and rhythmic guitar playing of any style. In order to play as a convincing funk guitarist, we need to work on the co-ordination between both of our hands:
01 Funk chord voicings In our fretting hand, we need to learn lea rn some new chord types – the standard open chord shapes that we would use in rock or pop playing are too big and bulky for Funk. Often, the Funk rhythm guitarist will take a chord (e.g. D minor7) minor7) and instead of playing the whole chord, will play a voicing that only contains the top three notes. We do this, because Funk music often has busy basslines and this approach allows the guitarist to play (in a busy rhythmic style) whilst leaving room for the bass player to do their thing. These chord boxes show a typical ve-string chord voicing for a D min7 chord and with it, the stripped s tripped down three-string voicing, more common in Funk.
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Styles Lesson Four
Funk Guitar These chord boxes show a higher voicing, with a six-string shape for our D min7 chord and with it, the stripped down three-string voicing, more common in Funk.
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This approach gives us some chord shapes that we can use to jam over a D minor funk vamp. You’ll notice when you play, that although you’re now using the correct voicings, it may not sound very funky yet. We need to inject some funk rhythms into your playing. So much of the sound of Funk guitar comes from the rhythms that the plucking hand plays. So next up, we’ll look at a variety of rhythmic approaches, each of which you can use to add more funk to your playing.
02 Funk rhythms, Ex. 01 For our rst basic Funk rhythm, we’ll focus on a four-note idea. Simply strum up and downstrokes as shown and use both hands to control the string muting through the rest of the bar. 5fr
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Styles Lesson Four
Funk Guitar 03 Funk rhythms, Ex. 02 In this example, we’ve added a slide at the start of the bar. The slide starts with the shape that we’re going to use, voiced down one fret. To work on this, voice the chord where you would usually play it and then move your hand down one fret. You don’t have to think of this too much as a different chord (although it is, in fact Db min7) - it’s easier to think that we are sliding into our D min7 to add some dirt and groove to the part.
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04 Funk rhythms, Ex. 03 In this example, we’re going to create Funk rhythms using the fretting hand muting technique that we’ve worked on in our technique lessons. You need to get used to applying pressure and relaxing it, without taking the fretting hand off the strings. The rhythm in our plucking hand is a simple down-up, down-up pattern. It’s the rhythmic interplay of fretted and muted notes that makes it sound funky.
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Styles Lesson Four
Funk Guitar 05 Chromatic chord movement When playing over a static chord vamp, we need to have some tasty rhythm licks we can use to prevent the part from sounding too boring and repetitive. First up, we’ll use a new chord type – D Dominant 9 (D9). This voicing uses the top four strings.
When playing over a D9 vamp, it can sound very funky to move the shape up two frets, then down one and then back to your original position. You can bring this idea to life by experimenting with a variety of Funk rhythms.
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Here’s an example of this chord movement used in a Funk groove:
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Styles Lesson Four
Funk Guitar 06 Tight staccato playing It’s vital for playing Funk that you can control the note length in your chord voicings. Essentially, we’re working on playing very short chords, with the pressure lifting enough to mute the strings between strums. It’s important to get the pressure just right – too heavy and you will hear choked notes, too light and the open strings will ring out. 4fr
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07 Moving octaves This is a great way of injecting some melody into your Funk rhythm playing. Short, catchy melodic ideas work best and it’s important to control your unwanted strings, particularly the string that sits between the two that you are playing. Guitarists like Wes Montgomery and George Benson could play entire solos with octaves, so you might want to check out their playing to get some ideas.
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