I listen to songs like Chocolate or Controversy or Superfunkycalifragisexy and the guitar work is just so tight and funky.... a lot of funk tracks are playing variations of sixteenths and it's difficult when I attempt to play these songs myself to try and decipher the rhythm.

Does anybody have any advice on this matter?

great question...what kind of guitar are you using?

A shitty Dean electric... a horrible metal guitar that I bought before I knew anything about guitars.

Am currently saving up for a strat.

MattyJam said:

I started playing last year I bought an Encore starter kit for around £150.Its a black Gibson LP copy.It actually sounds not bad when hooked up to a decent amp but I now feel ive progressed enough with lessons to move onto a decent guitar.Ive been looking at Hagstroms they sound really good.

MattyJam said:

Well, you could try just playing to the drums first. Like just play a note (or chord, or whatever) on each drum beat. This may help. But I don't know. It sorta came naturally to me..

Relaxing your hand and letting your "natural rhythm" kick in helps. Plus, work on picking a chord in different tempos - that really helped. And just continue to play along with the actual records. It'll come with time/practice

Mute the strings with your left hand and use the pick like you're playing a washboard (back and forth with just scratching) and practice these rhythms with the songs. Not working on the notes but just the rhythm, it's actually just making a noise but in order to get used to it, this is a good place to start.

Work on controlling your hand to to deaden the strings between chords to keep it nice and tight, not letting them ring out and run into each other.


Learn to make mini-chords - use just the top three strings high up and that can make it easier to change chords quickly. Don't use open chords cos the open strings will give you a very non-funk sound.


One piece of other advice:

Get to understand your tone controls - maybe roll off a fair amount of the bass and get a cleaner sound, or roll off the midrange or whatever - experiment with that.


Compression helps to keep the chords sounding tight and "in-the-pocket" but I am f*cking useless with setting a compression pedal so maybe one of the other guys on here can advise, if you wanna get that technical.



Anyone here agree with me on this? I am self-taught so I'm always interested in whether I have got this right or wrong!

MattyJam said:

This is the key thing to remember - when playing funk rhythm, Prince uses his guitar like a percussive instrument, not a melodic one.

I would advise against trying to learn Controversy and songs like that verbatim. I must have heard 100 versions of that song, and Prince never plays the same rhythm part twice.

And that's the key to it - practice a lot to backing tracks,trying to vary your rhythms over and around them. Don't stress out over getting it like the records - let yourself get into the feel of the track and enjoy playing with it. It's not easy to get to a Prince standard at this - he' a master of this style, and has a huge number of fills, rhythmic patterns and variations at his command to keep very simple sequences sounding very interesting. Only practice will get you feeling comfortable at it. And paradoxically, feeling comfortable with it will give you that edgy, tight sound that Prince and other great funk players have.

PS - Dean guitars rule - I want one of these:

funk and fills - that's prince's style

for the funk, you've got to get the right hand going first.

Sixteenth note strums, the "chick-ah-chick-ah" sound, is the basis for funk. Check out some Jimmy Nolen (James Browns guitar player) stuff for a little history.

Mute the strings with your left hand and strum down-up-down-up. You will count each strum 1-e-and-ah. That is one beat. Other beats would be 2-e-and-ah, 3-e-and-ah, etc.The strums have to be tight and fast (no big strums like you would when you play open position chords). As soon as you can get that "chick-ah" sound going, you're close.

For the left hand, we use small chord grips, not big barre chords. Think top 3 strings (1-2-3) or strings 2-3-4. This is a lesson by itself, but you're going to be playing a lot of dominant grips (i.e. seventh and ninth chords).

For the fills, look for the pentatonic patterns that sit under or around the chords grips you're playing. Look to play short phrases (3-7 notes) but keep the time tight (can't be late coming back into the chord our you'll lose the groove).

There are some ideas to think about, but you can't really do justice to this topic in a post. Hope some of these help.

Stereo said:

The funk on stuff like that works in threes. It's sixteenth notes, but it's every THIRD sixteenth note with one last one dropped to resolve the circle.

Dat-x-x-Dat-x-x-Da-x-x-Dat-x-x-Dat-x-x-x
Repeat.

To put the funk firmly and deeply into that pattern, add a swing feel to it (so then OH SNAP it's not 16th, but it's 24ths, but I think technically, it's dotted 16th notes that's right that's how I role)

That's based in the latino/brazillian beats which is actually HALF of a bar of tripled 16th notes:
Dat-x-x-Dat-x-x-Dat-x REPEAT

On Controversy, he does this but it starts on the up-beat instead of on the one (the pattern starts when the snare hits instead of the kick drum)

And ANOTHER way is to start out between the kick and the snare (a quarter note into the pattern?) you can hear this on my song Oh Face during the chorus. Sorry, I would point to a prince song but I can't think of any off hand. He tends to mix all of these up here and there, but it's usually based on this group of threes approach.

A lot of his funk rhythm style (and Catfish Collins from the JBs all bow all hail) play on the tripled-dotted-16ths or even just 8ths, paired with a furious choke-muting technique by the fretting hand.

The way to think of the choke-mute is opposite of the literal approach. Don't start out playing the hell out of the guitar and attempt to mute occasionally... instead start out muting everything and UNmute occasionally.

And oral sex has nothing to do with it. It's all digital stimulation. Not oral. Some folks are playing guitar with the wrong appendages out there.