The Funky Sandwich

I'm sure that every gigging guitar player has experienced that moment when you begin your solo, ready to blow the minds of every person in the place, but your fingers don't get the memo. Warming up before a gig is the best way to ensure that your playing is at the level you normally expect it to be at. In the following article I'm going to go through a few of the exercises I've learnt over my career as a guitar player. Exercise 1 The key to this exercise is that it's running chromatically, which gives most pentatonic-loving guitar players a bit of a brain wobble. I usually do this exercise first, just to get my fingers moving. Also, this exercise works best if you are using a metronome to keep time. Exercise 2 Allow me to apologise on behalf of Joe Satriani for teaching you this exercise. It's a killer! This is one of Joe Satrianis favourite warm up techniques, for good reason. It is the perfect exercise for preparing your f

It's April 2013, Coachella, and funk is filling the airwaves once again. Daft Punk's, then unknown, "Get Lucky" teaser is played to an audience of unsuspecting music lovers. The robots are shown jamming a truly epic funk track with none other than the father of funk, Nile Rodgers on guitar, and Pharrell Williams doing what he does best. The significance of this moment cannot be stressed enough. Funk, which had been laying dormant for thirty years, had finally made its way into popular culture once again. "Random Access Memories" started a funk revolution by establishing itself as the album of 2013/2014. In doing so, it set the stage for many great artists to capitalise on its success. Pharrell Williams, Olly Murs, Robin Thicke, Nick Jonas and many others contributed to this renaissance with their own brand of funk, but it wasn't until Mark Ronson, with the help of Bruno Mars, released "Uptown Funk" that I realised how powerful this gen