Cory Wong's Top Guitar Tips | Music Radar
In this video. Cory gives us some brilliant tips on how to improve your funky playing. From right hand technique, to chord voicings.
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00:00 There's a lot of people that ask me like what's the main thing that I can do to
00:04 sound like you on funk guitar or whatever and then I'll hear them play
00:08 and there's two common things that I hear that I will initially try to get
00:13 somebody to just tweak a little bit and again it doesn't mean that it's better
00:16 because it's the way that I do it it's just different it's the way that I do
00:19 things and normally that's what people are asking how do you do what you do
00:23 doesn't mean that it's better or worse it's just the way that I do things. The
00:28 number one thing is timing. Most people their time is not amazing and they're
00:33 not as focused on their rhythm and the the right hand is a little bit sloppy so
00:38 the number one thing I always tell people to practice is play with a
00:41 metronome get your timing exactly on and just try to get this motor thing running
00:47 where you just no matter what style you're playing having that motor going
01:00 being able to play in time is really
01:08 it's still the same technique as just having a steady down up down up down up
01:19 approach really then also makes it so you don't have to think about what is
01:24 the strumming pattern it's just anytime it's one E and uh anytime it's a number
01:31 or an and it's a down stroke anytime it's an E or an uh it's an upstroke
01:35 makes it super simple you don't have to think about it and then the next thing
01:38 is a lot of times what I'll see people do with their left hand is they do they
01:43 don't do enough muting and they hold on to the notes a little too long for my
01:48 taste so for example sometimes and and they'll play really thick voicings so
01:54 sometimes I'll see somebody playing like a fifth a sixth string rooted a7 chord
02:01 like this and they'll play the entire voicing and they'll do something like
02:05 this there the right hand thing I had the motor running but that doesn't feel
02:18 good to me because the left hand nuance is not doing any favors for the fact
02:23 that my right hand is still playing in time so even though my right hand is
02:26 together the next thing is to build some nuance in the left hand and one of the
02:31 biggest things is to pay a little more attention to the releases of notes so if
02:36 I were to just go
02:38 doesn't sound very good but if I go I'm still just thinking about that same a7
02:53 shape I'm just breaking it up into different little pods and just picking
02:59 out different notes and little two three string sections of that voicing so I'm
03:04 thinking of and even adding some of those little extra notes from the scale
03:14 or just I'm still thinking about the same voicing but I changed my fingering
03:18 to being more like this and then adding a little bit of that sort of thing in
03:24 there the less notes I play the more it creates space for the other people in
03:29 the band if I'm covering too much low end it's gonna get in the way of the
03:34 bass player or the keyboard player keyboard players have ten fingers and
03:37 they have a lot of notes they can cover they can get a huge sound the guitar
03:41 doesn't always need to play that role most of the time in funk guitar playing
03:45 the role is a lot more of a percussive role and sometimes filling out some
03:51 harmonic space so I can still get the I can still accomplish the harmonic sense
03:55 of a7 but and also kind of cover the the role of like what bongos or congas or a
04:02 shaker would do with this thing so if I think of taking the role of a percussion
04:09 player and a little bit of some keyboards for harmonic information and
04:13 mixing them together it kind of creates what I do so I'm always thinking about
04:18 those two things bring them together so here's that a7 chord right hand motors
04:22 running I'm breaking up the vote this voice thing with this extra thing into
04:27 just little little smaller voicings within that so here's an example
04:46 and it ends up a lot of times just sounding more like a riff which is which
04:51 can be cool because then you come up with a specific part that makes it feel
04:54 signature to the song rather than just like which is like I don't know what
05:04 you're doing you're just jamming on an a7 but if you go that feels like a
05:22 phrase it's a musical phrase that can be like the signature thing for a verse of
05:29 a song or something and if that's the part you play it has more intentionality
05:32 and it's a phrase that makes sense that somebody can grasp on to it doesn't just
05:37 sound like jamming on a7 so I guess that turned into three tips right hand motor
05:44 running left hand bring in the nuance by not not feeling like you need to play
05:49 every note in every string break up your voicings into little different sections
05:55 and then the third thing is just play musical phrases when you play musical
05:59 phrases it helps enhance a song overall it makes it feel less like something
06:04 that's just going on and it gives it a little more intention