The Sixteenth-Note Engine

Funk rhythm guitar is not really about chords. It is about a right hand that never stops moving.

Set your strumming hand going in constant sixteenth notes: down, up, down, up, four strokes per beat, sixteen per bar. The hand keeps that motion through the entire song, whether or not a chord is supposed to sound. That unbroken motion is what keeps everything you play in time with itself.

What changes is your left hand. Rest your fretting fingers lightly on the strings so they touch but do not press, and every stroke comes out as a dry percussive scratch — no pitch, just rhythm. Press down, and that one stroke rings as a chord. Release, and you are back to scratching.

So the skill is not strumming in rhythm. It is choosing which of the sixteen slots in a bar get pressure, while the hand keeps swinging through all sixteen.

Start with the simplest possible choice: press on the second sixteenth of beat 2, and again on the second sixteenth of beat 4. Everything else is a scratch. Play a full minute of that without the hand pausing. It will feel like almost nothing is happening. That is correct — funk is mostly space with a hand moving through it.

One bar of sixteenths, two pressed hits

x is a muted scratch, 5 is the chord pressed and sounding (Am7 on the top four strings). The hand plays all sixteen strokes; only two of them get pressure.

e
B
G
D
A
E

--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--|
--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--|
--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--|
--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--5--x--x--|
--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--|
--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--|

Metronome

Set it to 90 BPM in 4/4. Count the sixteenths out loud — one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a — until the subdivision is automatic.

Now take it to a track. This one sits on A minor, G, F and Em7 and moves slowly enough that you can think.

Don't play the chords as written yet. Play only muted scratches for the first pass, following nothing but the pulse. On the second pass, let one chord ring per bar, on beat 1, and scratch everything else. On the third, add a second pressed chord late in each bar.

Three passes: all scratch, one chord a bar, then two. The hand never stops in any of them.