In this video. Cory gives us some brilliant tips on how to improve your funky playing. From right hand technique, to chord voicings.
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TechTranscript
00:00There's a lot of people that ask me like what's the main thing that I can do to
00:04sound like you on funk guitar or whatever and then I'll hear them play
00:08and there's two common things that I hear that I will initially try to get
00:13somebody to just tweak a little bit and again it doesn't mean that it's better
00:16because it's the way that I do it it's just different it's the way that I do
00:19things and normally that's what people are asking how do you do what you do
00:23doesn't mean that it's better or worse it's just the way that I do things the
00:28number one thing is timing most people their time is not amazing and they're
00:33not as focused on their rhythm and the right hand is a little bit sloppy so the
00:38number one thing I always tell people to practice is play with a metronome get
00:42your timing exactly on and just try to get this motor thing running where you
00:48just no matter what style you're playing having that motor going being able to
01:01play in time is really it's still the same technique as just having a steady
01:18down-up down-up down-up approach really then also makes it so you don't have to
01:23think about what is the strumming pattern it's just anytime it's one E and
01:30anytime it's a number or an and it's a downstroke anytime it's an E or an up
01:34it's an upstroke makes it super simple you don't have to think about it and
01:38then the next thing is a lot of times what I'll see people do with their left
01:42hand is they do they don't do enough muting and they hold on to the notes a
01:46little too long for my taste so for example sometimes and they'll play
01:51really thick voicings so sometimes I'll see somebody playing like a fifth a
01:58sixth string rooted a7 chord like this and they'll play the entire voicing and
02:04they'll do something like this there the right hand thing I had the motor running
02:17but that doesn't feel good to me because the left hand nuance is not doing any
02:22favors for the fact that my right hand is still playing in time so even though
02:25my right hand is together the next thing is to build some nuance in the left hand
02:29and one of the biggest things is to pay a little more attention to the releases
02:35of notes so if I were to just go doesn't sound very good but if I go I'm
02:51still just thinking about that same a7 shape I'm just breaking it up into
02:57different little pods and just picking out different notes and little two
03:01three-string sections of that voicing so I'm thinking of and even adding some of
03:13those little extra notes from the scale or just I'm still thinking about the
03:16same voicing but I changed my fingering to being more like this and then adding
03:22a little bit of that sort of thing in there the less notes I play the more it
03:28creates space for the other people in the band if I'm covering low end it's
03:33gonna get in the way of the bass player or the keyboard player keyboard players
03:36have ten fingers and they have a lot of notes they can cover they can get a huge
03:40sound the guitar doesn't always need to play that role most of the time in funk
03:44guitar playing the role is a lot more of a percussive role and sometimes filling
03:50out some harmonic space so I can still get the I can still accomplish the
03:54harmonic sense of a7 but and also kind of cover the the role of like what
04:01bongos or congas or a shaker would do with this thing so if I think of taking
04:07the role of a percussion player and a little bit of some keyboards for
04:12harmonic information and mixing them together it kind of creates what I do so
04:17I'm always thinking about those two things bring them together so here's
04:20that a7 chord right hand motors running I'm breaking up this voicing with this
04:26extra thing into just little little smaller voicings within that so here's
04:31an example and it ends up a lot of times just sounding more like a riff which is
04:51which can be cool because then you come up with a specific part that makes it
04:54feel signature to the song rather than just like I don't know what you're doing
05:04just jamming on an a7 but if you go that feels like a phrase it's a musical
05:24phrase that can be like the signature thing for a verse of a song or something
05:30and if that's the part you play it has more intentionality and it's a phrase
05:34that makes sense that somebody can grasp on to it doesn't just sound like jamming
05:38on a7 so I guess that turned into three tips right hand motor running left hand
05:46bring in the nuance by not not feeling like you need to play every note in
05:50every string break up your voicings into little different sections and then the
05:56third thing is just play musical phrases when you play musical phrases it helps
06:00enhance a song overall it makes it feel less like something that's just going on
06:06and it gives it a little more intention