It's a nice guitar that Strat isn't it. He calls it the hit maker. Apparently it's the guitar he records every thing on. That goes beyond Chic. I read somewhere and it did get mention too in this doc', that its behind a few $billion of record sales :lol:
He didn't invent funk. That came about in the 60's, born out of Jazz & blues. They called it R&B, Funk, Soul ect. Jimmy Nolan was James Browns guitarist. He would have been one of the early pioneers of funk guitar playing, if not
the pioneer of that style. That all gave birth to Disco which was a bit annoying but harmless really looking back on it. That in turn started to evolve into hip hop, house right up to what Ali G called Speed Garage :lol:
What you hear in the doc was how Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards developed what you could call a template. A unique style that was their signature sound and applied it to other artists who got them in to produce them. That was all influenced by the 60's & early 70's funk bands. Bands like Earth, Wind & Fire. Kool & The Gang, before they become pop bands with the focus on the lead singers that were on commercial radio in the late 70's & early 80's, were pretty much instrumental funk bands. Chic kind of did the right thing at exactly the right time and a lot of other bands followed suit and became more like disco bands as that's where the money was. Record sales were huge back then so they would have cleaned up. These sounds remind me of the charts back in 77 & 78 There were so many different genres all competing in the charts. It's was a big event on a Sunday night listening to the top 40 with a cassette in the recorder taping the songs you liked. You could go from Chic, to the Sex Pistols, to some mind numbingly cr@p Nan's favourite like the Brotherhood of Man all in a few minutes :lol: those were the bands you left the pause button in as they were a waste of tape and proper embarrassing if your mates heard it :D
I've found some info on the George Van Eps method he was talking about too. There's a lot of info there but NR is talking about just playing 3 strings in a chord to make it sound less messy. It's all about controling damping with funk as it only works when you play it tight and very precisely.
http://www.tedgreene.com/audio/TedGreene_GeorgeVanEps.aspHere's another great example of funk guitar by Onnie McIntire on the intro. These blokes were from Scotland
http://youtu.be/bSq93Hsn0Bg
