Funk guitar on the sixteenths

The sixteenth-note right hand

Funk players keep the strumming hand moving in sixteenths all the time, down-up-down-up, and only touch the strings on some of the strokes. The hand never stops, so the groove never drifts. In the riffs, every rest is a stroke that misses the strings on purpose.

The ninth chord

The E9 chord, played on the D, G and B strings around fret 7, is the sound of funk rhythm guitar: bright, jazzy and percussive. Slide it up a fret to F9 and back for a quick accent. Chicken Scratch stabs E9 on the sixteenths and slides to F9 at the end of each bar.

Single-note grooves

The other half of funk guitar is the single-note line, close to a bass part, high on the neck or on the low strings. Hot Wax works the E minor pentatonic in sixteenths with rests in between. Keep the notes short: funk is as much about where the notes stop as where they start.

Funk sounds best with a clean, slightly bright tone. Lock in with the bass: try the funk bass lines of the funk bass lesson, which use the same pocket.

Muting with both hands

Funk is full of scratches, the dead, percussive strums between the chords. Relax the fretting hand so the fingers touch the strings without pressing them to the frets, and the strum sounds like a snare drum. Press down only for the chord hits. The picking hand helps too: resting lightly on the strings near the bridge between strokes. Practise switching between a muted scratch and a ringing E9 on every sixteenth, slowly, and the groove of every funk record starts to make sense.

A good funk part repeats the same one-bar or two-bar figure for the whole song, with tiny variations. Resist the urge to add notes: lock in, repeat, and listen to the drums. When the pattern feels automatic, try moving the E9 stabs one sixteenth earlier or later and hear how much the groove changes.