A Brand New Bag
IF YOU EXPLORE the history of funk guitar, you’ll notice distinctive technical elements among artists known for playing this soulful style of music. The godfather of it all was Jimmy Nolen, who recorded and performed in James Brown’s legendary band in the mid ’60s and laid the foundation for an often-imitated guitar style that others have embraced and expanded upon ever since. Nolen’s signature style featured a fairly clean and bright electric tone and a syncopated rhythmic approach that incorporated the use of alternate picking and strumming with fretted notes and chords that were typically interspersed with fret-hand-muted strings and “dead” notes, an approach that came to be referred to as “scratch,” or “chicken scratch.” In addition, he used a handful of dominant-7 and minor-7 chord shapes, or “grips,” that often included upper-structure chord tones, also known as tensions, or extensions, such as the 9th and 13th — what many musicians would label “jazz chords.”
As you move through the decades following funk’s evolution, you’ll encounter other guitarists who further developed the style by applying musical concepts shared by like-minded musicians. The most notable of these are Chic’s Nile Rodgers, Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel, the Meters’ Leo Nocentelli, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Fruscianti, and the late, Minneapolis-based funk-pop music legend Prince, who kept funk rhythm guitar alive and well during the keyboard-dominated pop and new wave
