Transcript
Hi, this is Stephanie from Tomato’s House of Rock and I’m going to show you how to comp in funk. So, again, just to go over it, comp actually means accompany. So this is what you want to be playing when somebody else is taking a solo, or if you’re just building up your jam together with everybody.
Funk is a pretty broad title so there are actually a lot of different styles and rhythms that I think really fall under this umbrella of funk. So we’re just going to look at one pattern that should take your really far in many of these different styles. Let’s do it in the C minor pentatonic. So, there’s a pattern here. If we were to just start with a C minor, just play an old triad, we would have these notes. Then if I wanted to slide into the major, I could just get that effect real easy. Do it up here so it’s a little less muddy for you. Yeah, so that would be the first position that we’re going to have for this.
Then, all we’re going to do is move our three and five; they’re both going to go up a step. So, now we’ve really got E and G, even though we slid into that E. Now we’re just going to go up to F and then we’re going to take it even one higher. So we have F and A and now we’re going to go up one more. We’re going to go up to G and then B flat, because since we’re in that C minor zone, that’s why we need the B flat in there. So all three of them would be, then we’ll do them coming down as well, so it’ll be coming up and then going back down again. Adding in a side note, use it at your own discretion. It can definitely get over you, so pick the moment that feels right to use it.
So we’ve got that pattern. Then to really give it that funk feel, what we’re going to do is now add in our thumb on C, which is the one, every other. So in between every cord we play, we’re going to also play the C. So we would have… Because this one is a little bit more complicated, I’m going to do it one more time so you can really see what’s going on. Okay, now let’s hear what it sounds like sped up a little bit. So we would have… So just from that alone, again, it’s already starting to create a little bit of that funk feel.
Really, from there, you can make so many different variations on either the rhythm or even the order that you’re playing it in. So maybe… So there I was doing the G and the B flat twice. Maybe you do two of these before you go back to the C. So you could have… So there’s a lot of variation. But if you get this feeling under your fingers of just the two notes, back to the C, two notes, back to the C, you’re going to be in really good shape to come up with your own rhythms that feel really good. So let’s hear what it sounds like with some music.
