Byline: Jude Gold
ONE NIGHT, AFTER A WHITE-HOT SET OF high-energy funk with his band What It Is, Avi Bortnick was told, “You’re the funkiest white motherf–r I’ve ever heard.” The statement would be a big compliment coming from just about anyone, but coming from Ronald Laster–a first-call guitarist for funk’s Imperial Grand Master, James Brown–it was kudos of the highest order. Word soon spread that Bortnick was playing some of the sickest sixteenth-note funk riffs around, and when John Scofield was on the hunt for a rhythm guitarist, his search ended in bliss when, on a recommendation by Charlie Hunter, he found Bortnick.
Since then, Bortnick has been an integral part of Scofield’s evolved sound, adding infectious rhythm guitar parts and laptop-generated sample sequences to the legendary guitarist’s mesmerizing meld of jazz, funk, and electronica, all of which can be heard on two recent Scofield albums, Uberjam and Up All Night. For an even bigger dose of Bortnick’s stellar grooving, be sure to check out his new solo album, Clean Slate [avibortnick.com].
Perhaps the most hypnotic quality of Bortnick’s playing is its sheer evenness. “I’m very conscious of time,” says Bortnick. “One way to develop better time is to practice with a metronome pattern that hits random pulses in the groove–that is, it tags arbitrary pulses that are still part of the rhythmic framework, but aren’t straight quarter-notes. That’ll keep you on your toes.”
Though people often compliment Bortnick on his “wicked right hand,” he is quick to point out that when it comes to funk guitar, the fretting hand is just as important as the picking hand. “A lot of it has to do with muting things evenly,” notes Bortnick, playing the highly staccato repeated A chord in Ex. 1. “This is a great exercise for improving your ability to mute with your fretting hand. What I’m doing is muting the strings after every single chord strum by simply lifting my fretting band off the fretboard just enough to deaden the strings. You can also try this approach on moving chords [Ex.2]. Then, try it on anything you want–not just chords, but single notes and double-stops.”
Moving on to single-note funk, Bortnick uses Ex. 3 to illustrate how to get a monstrous attack by striking several strings at once with the pick, but only sounding one note at a time. “It allows you to hit the strings more freely, which results in a bigger sound,” observes Bortnick. “By reaching over the neck a little with my fretting hand’s thumb, and letting that hand’s extra fingers–the ones that aren’t fretting a note–rest gently on the unused strings, I can strum really hard without getting a mess of unwanted ringing, open strings.
“There’s also the issue of picking-hand control,” continues Bortnick, playing Ex. 4. “This riff is a good test, because it demands that you hit a chord, D7, for a few pulses and then–just a sixteenth-note or two later–switch gears to picking single notes for the rest of the measure.”
Once you feel you’ve got a strong pocket going with a certain riff or groove, consider this: “There is more than one way to slice up 4/4 time,” says Bortnick. He demonstrates this assertion with Ex. 5, a rhythmically displaced double-stop riff from Uberjam’s title track made all the more intriguing by Scofield’s quoting of the famous “Blue Moon” melody over the top. Every time Bortnick plays the example’s main lick, which is exactly one bar long, he adds an eighth-note rest. This is why the riff starts on the and of beat one in bar 2, on beat two in bar 3, and on the and of beat two in bar 4. “The riff sounds like it’s in 9/8 until I fix it at the end of bar 4 by cutting off its last two double-stops, making the whole thing start over on the next downbeat. This kind of riff is fun–it’s like having your odd-meter cake and still being able to eat your 4/4 funk, too.”
All the techniques presented in this lesson can be heard in a single song, “Diabolus Solo,” which you can find on Avi Bortnick’s album Clean Slate or on his Web site, avibortnick.com.
AVI'S GO-TO GEAR Guitar: 1992 Fender American Standard Stratocaster outfitted with Graph Tech String Saver polymer saddles. Strings: D'Addario or Electro-Harmonix .010-.046. Amps: Clean, loud Fenders and Mesa/Boogies. Pedals: Boss DD-5 Digital Delay, DOD FX-17 wah. Laptop: Apple iBook loaded with Ableton Live looping software.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Miller Freeman Publications
COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group