Freak Out! 21 GROOVE GUITAR GREATS!
Welcome to this exclusive lesson looking at the pop, funk, soul, and disco rhythm styles that have powered the charts for over half a century. The aim of this lesson is to provide you with some core techniques and concepts to help you build a good vocabulary in many rhythm guitar styles. Whether you’re ‘into’ funk and soul or not, all these ideas are easily transferrable to other genres.
The rhythm guitar is often one of the key instruments in pop music and can be heard popping and chinking away in the background of some of the biggest-selling records of all time. We have used 21 groove masters as inspiration for our studies, and created an eight-bar mini piece for each. We have also split these 21 guitarists in four groups.
Group one is entitled Iconic Artists, and features Prince, Curtis Mayfield and Nile Rodgers. Prince and Curtis Mayfield’s back catalogues speak for themselves. Typically their tracks feature quality groove guitar parts delivered by the great men themselves. Nile Rodgers was the driving force behind Chic, Sister Sledge and many more. He’s also a big-time producer and has collaborated with the likes of David Bowie and Duran Duran.
Group two is Band Based Groovers, and features those guys in the engine room of the big labels but whose names have too often been overlooked. Guitarists like James Brown’s, Jimmy Nolen had a disciplined approach, laying down
