Want to master funk guitar? You’d better familiarize yourself with ‘chanking’ and shell chords – two essentials of game-changing James Brown guitarist Jimmy Nolen

Often in funk, the guitarist’s role is strictly rhythmic. It’s less about shredding or melodies and more about adding a syncopated rhythm or some texture, and that means most of the work lies with the picking hand.

Here, in this lesson from Pickup Music, you’ll learn funk fundamentals like chanking and shell chords.

If you want to tighten up your funk rhythm chops, you’ll need to get down with the ‘chanking’ strumming technique, as used famously by James Brown guitarist Jimmy Nolen, who employed it as part of his ‘chicken scratch’ approach.

Essentially, it’s a mix of sharp strumming and tight on/off muting to cut chords short and give a percussive feel.

A big part of funk guitar is reducing chords down to their core, playing only the most important notes. It’s rare to strum a full barre chord in funk and more common to use only the top three or four strings.

Often, this means removing the 5th interval and sometimes the root note, and even other notes may be ditched for the sake of practicality. These are known as shell chords.

In Pickup Music’s study track, Love Machina, you can try out both techniques.

James Brown rhythm guitar lesson - YouTube

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Chords

Here’s an example of Eb9 and Eb13 chords getting trimmed down to size – making them shell chords.

By removing the lower notes, the guitar takes up less sonic space and makes room for vocals and other mid-frequency instruments.

Don’t worry about losing the root note. In a band arrangement, the lower register will be covered by the bass.

Study Track – Love Machina

Bar 2 is the track’s main groove. Start with the Eb9 shape and play two downstrokes, followed by a downstroke Eb13, and finally back to the Eb9 on an upstroke.

The bass and drums create the foundation, so your job is to sit lightly on top and stay ‘in the pocket’. Bar 6 is a new groove based around an Ab dominant chord played down-up, down-up, up-up-up.

Take note where the shape moves to Gb9 and be ready to walk it back up to the Ab9. Bar 7 is a repeat of the intro which acts as a turnaround to take you back into the Eb groove.

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