Funk Grooves (Guitar Lesson RH-023) How to play

(Justin) Hi, how're you doing?

Justin here, again

for part three of our funk guitar series.

What I'm going to do
in this lesson

is take you through some of the ways that

you might use the chords and the rhythms

that we've already looked at

and how you might put them together

to make up some little grooves.

There's a few problems

that you're going to encounter

so I would like to
kind of help you out

and show you how you are going
to get through

those little hassles
as you come to them.

I figured that learning some grooves

might be a good way to do that.

So the first pattern
we are going to look at,

is kind of
a James Brown-y style one.

We're going to be using the 9th chord

that we were using for the rhythm guitar

to start off with.

What we are going to be doing

is we are going to be using
the 2nd funk pattern

that we looked at
for the first two beats.

And then, the 3rd rhythm pattern

for the 3rd beat.

Let me play it for you a couple of times
really slow, so it's going to have

[guitar strumming]

1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4

Down, down, down

Up.

Down, down, down

Up.

Down, down, down

Up.

[guitar strumming faster]

Ok now, that's the first pattern.

So practice that through
really really slowly.

Get used to the idea of adding that little
finger on there for the 13th chord.

Pretty straight forward.

Now, just at the end of that

I started to do something else
which is going to be pattern 2

that I am going to show you now

or Groove 2 let's call it.

And what we're after now

is being able to hold that 13th chord

for the three 16th notes rather than
actually hitting it every time.

So the important thing to get used to here

is the fact that your right hand

is still not going to stop moving.

That's really really really important.

The right hand, or strumming hand,

is going to be moving even though

you're not touching the strings

just like you might have done with ties

in your regular kind of chord strumming.

In this one, we are going to be doing

with the clicks on everything except

in beat 3 where we hold the 13th chord.

We go down,
then we're going to lift the hand up.

It's going to go back down

and then the up will go back to the 9th.

So it will be down, up

[guitar strumming]

Down, up, down, up

That's just beat 3.

So just listen to it now,
I'll do it really slowly.

[guitar strumming]

1, 2 ,3 and 4

1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4 , 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4 , 1 2 3 4

Down, Down, Down, Up

Down, Down, Down, Up

[guitar strumming faster]

That kind of groove.

Again make sure you practice
these things really slowly.

Don't try to rush up and
do it really fast because

you'll probably make
a whole heap of mistakes.

Occasionally you might get a little bit
of an extra chord on one of the strums

you didn't want, or the chord will
hang around for a bit longer

than you meant to press the
chord down for. But that's ok!

As long as it sounds good.

So, the trick on that one is
keeping that right hand moving.

[guitar strumming]

Down, Down, Down, Up

Hopefully you can see that hand
still keeps moving

even though I'm not
playing anything.

Down. Sorry, let me start that again.

[guitar strumming]

Down, Down, Down, Up

Down, Down, Down, Up

[guitar strumming]

It's a really really important trick
to get used to the idea

that the hand, even though
I'm teaching at the moment,

is solid 16th notes strumming, like,
chiky chiky chiky chiky

all the time.

You don't actually have to hit the strings
every time if you don't want.

Sometimes it sounds a lot better not to.

You might just have...

[guitar strumming]

That was the same pattern
without any clicks at all.

[guitar strumming]

The hand still keeps moving though
if you just go...

[guitar strumming]

Then, you will never have
the proper groove.

You've got to get the hand going
and stay going, yeah?

For this groove number 3

we are going to be using rhythm pattern 2

which was the one with just the
chord played on the beat

and the rest of the notes muted.
This one.

[guitar strumming]

But now what we are going to do

is suss out this how to move the chords

while you're still doing the muted
strumming

because what you're going to find,
most of you

when you change chords
you lift all your fingers off the strings.

But if you are trying to strum continuously

especially if it's fast, if you lift

your string fingers off the strings

you get all the open strings ringing out
which sounds really horrible.

So what you have to learn to do

is to be able to move from
one chord to another

while leaving your fingers
touching the strings all the time,

so, they never leave.

Kind of sounds easy,
but once you start doing it

you'll find that your fingers can quite
easily get tied into knots.

It's not that difficult
if you do it slowly

and work on trying to make sure

that the muted click noises are
always there

and that you don't let any of those
open strings get out.

So, what we're going to be doing
for this one is

doing the first 9th chord
that I showed you

which was the one with the two
outside E strings muted

and going to the 7th chord
which is part of the C shape.

Now I'm going to a little close up of this

so you can see exactly
how my hand is working

and how it's touching
the strings all the time.

But the idea would be,
just be going...

[guitar strumming]

Change

9, 9, 7, 7

9, 9, 7, 7

9, 9, 7

[guitar strumming faster]

Fairly straightforward.

Let me do a little close up

so you can the way my hand
has to move around

but still remaining in contact
with the strings.

[Justin] Here we are with
our 9th chord shape,

the one using the little finger as well.

And we play that once.

Then we've got all of these mutes

where the fingers have to move around

to our 7.

So...

[guitar strumming]

There you're doing it in
really slow motion.

[guitar strumming]

It's quite tricky. You're just
letting them kind of glide around.

They're in contact with the strings
though all the time

If I do it at normal speed now.

[guitar strumming]

It's quite tricky to get those
fingers to stay on the strings

all the time. But it
just takes a bit of practice.

I'm just going to show you
one more really quickly

to finish off with, which is using
nearly all of the chords

that we've done so far
in one little groove.

So, what we're going to be doing is,
we're going to be doing E7

[guitar strumming]

E9 with the little finger

E7

E13 to E9

Now the pattern is going to be

[guitar strumming]

1, 2, 3, 4

9, 2, 3, 4

7, 2, 3, 4

There's going to be an
upstroke with the 13.

And you're going to have
one muted down strum

and then,

an up, which will be the beat 2.

16th note 2 of beat 4.

This is going to be on the website
with little markings

like a tab kind of system for you to
see exactly what's going on.

Sounds like

[guitar strumming]

Let me give you a quick close up of that.

It's going to be going 7

[guitar strumming]

9, 7, 13, 9

7

[guitar strumming]

I know that last one is
a little bit tricky.

You'll have to check the website
for a proper tab on that

because I'm running out of time
for this lesson.

So I hope that's given you
a bit of an insight

into how to use those chords
and stuff that we've done so far.

I'll be doing the more
advanced lessons very soon

I've run out of time today, but,
I will get on to them

as soon as possible.

And, hopefully, you'll be
funking your butt off.

Have a good one, dudes.
Take care of yourselves.

Funk out. See you soon.
Bye Bye.