The rules of funk guitar. By Cory Wong
As one of the most respected players working in funk right now, Cory Wong is widely regarded as the Nile Rodgers for the next generation. Ahead of his UK tour in October, he explains how to make sure you stay right in that pocket and reveals the chords that can get you through any musical scenario…
Your right hand is often described as a motor – always ticking along even in between the notes you play…
“What I noticed early on is that a lot of things feel easier when all the downstrokes are on the beat or on an ‘and’. And all the ‘e’ and ‘a’ notes are played using an upstroke. If I live by that philosophy, that means my right hand is just pulsing 16th notes the whole time. I’m just deciding what to hit the strings, which strings to hit, how many notes I’m actually fretting or whether to just play scratches. I never have to think about strumming patterns – it’s all taken care of because the motor is always going. And even if the rhythm has a lot of pauses and rests, it sounds less jerky because my internal subdivision is always ticking. If my brain is counting every 16th note and I’m only playing eighth notes, I will play tighter.”
Because there’s less margin for error…
“Exactly. Players who are only thinking in eighth notes might have more leeway to speed up or drag, because there’s more space between eighth notes. Give yourself twice the amount of precision. I always try to think of one subdivision deeper.”
Another part of your playing is how you hint at chords instead of playing every note…
“That’s something I’ve learned from people like Nile Rodgers. He won’t play the full chord, even though he’s got the full Emin7 grip on his left hand. That way, even if he hits more strings than he planned to, it’s always going to be the right note. But he generally focuses on picking only the upper few strings. Prince did that a lot and he’s my favourite rhythm guitarist. The idea is to give only the amount of information that’s needed from you.”
Which is one huge difference between a funk ensemble and a rock power trio, right?
“Yup. In a lot of bands I play with, there might be keyboard players, plus a horn section, maybe even another guitarist. All of a sudden there’s a lot of information happening in a lot of different ranges which can interfere with each other. If we’re just jamming on a C7, I might just play a root and a flat seven – like the C on the first fret of the second string and the B bon the third fret of the third string. I’ll do that instead of the whole shape. On its own it can sound like a weird, clashing two-note thing. But in the context of a big band and wider arrangement, it suddenly sounds really cool. The dissonance is what makes it interesting, people will go, ‘Oh, w
