Jazz Funk  Guitar

This week I’ve faced my fear of speaking into a camera for the good of your jazz-funk education, enjoy!

The first half of this quick lesson teaches you an Am6 arpeggio, which gives you a bright, jazzy sound of a minor vamp or II chord in a progression:

Jazz Funk Example 1

I recorded the video with only half and idea of what i was going to do, and in demonstrating it, mixed up the arpeggio by starting half way up which sounded pleasant, so I’ve tabbed that out for you as well:

Jazz Funk Example 2

Next comes the rhythmic displacement, an impressive sounding phrase, but it’s a pretty straightforward; we’re just splitting up a ‘straight’ rhythm by adding rests between groups of notes. In this case we’re putting a 16th note rest between groups of 4:

Jazz Funk Example 3

Finally, I demonstrated how you can apply our displaced 16th note rhythm to a more linear blues scale run. The second one was the best, so here’s the tab for that:

Jazz Funk Example 4

Hope this is of use to you, explore the arpeggio and the rhythmic concept on your own, and I’ll do a follow up lesson looking a little deeper soon.

Cheers!

Sean.