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Funky rhythms

Rip It Up by Orange Juice

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In this video I’m taking a look a the Orange Juice Classic.

Recording Info

Here’s some fantastic info on the recording of this track from producer Martin Hayles who recently left this great comment on YouTube. The mystery of the lead guitar phaser sound is solved. Also a brilliant water droplet sound trick –

Highlighted commentMARTIN HAYLES1 day agoVery Nice Lesson and yes Malcolm main guitar part was played using a mutron Bi-Phase pedal. I call it a pedal, but it was more like a small arp synth with patch cards that were placed on top of the controls to get preset sounds. It only has a mono output so the main signal was panned Left and a 1/16 delay of that sound was panned Right. The bass sound was indeed a Roland TB 303. The water droplet noises were created with Edwyn tapping his jackplug into his amp on a metal doorstop on the studio floor which was then flanged. Edwyns amp was a Fender Twin with reverb on. The drums on the track are actual drum loops created from Zeke playing for a couple of hours then cut up on a multitrack to create the song. If you want any more info let me know. Martin Hayles (Producer)

Look-Ka Py Py by The Meters

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I think the best thing you can do to improve you groove (other than working on this funk warm up lesson) is to learn some properly funky tunes. And they don’t come much more funky than this one.

Life During Wartime by Talking Heads

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A Talking Heads classic, with some lovely, funky rhythm work from David Byrne.

Music/Tab

Here’s my transcription. Check out the video for my thoughts on how best to pick this.

Viet Nam by Minutemen

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Here’s my second Minutemen lesson (my take on West Germany can be found here.) All about the rhythm here – keep your strumming hand relaxed or you’ll lose the funkiness.

West Germany by Minutemen

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In this lesson I’m taking a look at the guitar style of the mighty D Boon of California punk(?) band Minutemen.

Here’s the live clip I mention in the video. Love the way D Boon moves on stage!

And here’s Nels Cline taking about his favourite riffs. West Germany is towards the end. Far be it from me to criticise the mighty Nels, but I think he gets it a bit wrong…sorry!

Clean Up Woman by Betty Wright

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Here we have a 70s soul-funk classic. I love the soul rhythm guitar style: it’s all about perfectly formed, groovy parts rather than anything too technical. And this song is a great example of just that. According to my research, guitar on this song was performed by a certain Willie ‘Little Beaver’ Hale – not name I’d come across the name before, but what a player! He’s made a lot of great records as a session player, and I’ve just been checking out a couple of his solo albums from the 70s which are fantastic. (A nice Little Beaver interview here too.)

The original recording sounds like this:

And check out this TV performance with Little Beaver on guitar. Shame he has his back to the camera for the entire video, but you can see the position where he’s playing those chords for the main riff.

I’ve written the music out below. We have the three main riffs which are played simultaneously on the record (Little Beaver on all guitar parts? Not sure) and then we have the chords for the B-section. Download the tab here.

Get The Sound

I’m not sure what gear Little Beaver would have used on the original. And what guitar is he playing on the video above – any ideas? My first thoughts were to use my Tele for this kind of song, but that didn’t sound quite right as the tone on the original is quite warm and full sounding. So in the end I went for  my Vox Virage guitar which has flat wound strings on it. Also, a Wampler Tumulus overdrive pedal with the gain all the way off. And my 80s Fender Super Champ amp. My looper pedal is a basic TC Electronic Ditto.

Other Lessons You Might Like

Soul Man – a very similar triad-based main riff in this Sam & Dave masterpiece.

Get Lucky – a modern day funky classic.