「FUNK GUITAR」のレビュー

SOUND QUALITY : 4 stars

SELECTION: 5 stars

FORMATTING: 3 stars

BANG FOR THE BUCK: 4 stars



Zero-G's Funk Guitar has been around for a couple of years, but for whatever reasons has avoided our scrutiny... Until now (cue diabolical laughter). Don't let the disc's title mislead you. Many of these licks, riffs, and effects are perfectly suited for other musical styles (blues, soul, R&B, jazz, rock, hip-hop, techno, you name it).You'll hear motifs reminiscent of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, the Doobie Brothers, Prince, the Jackson Five, and more. According to producer / performer; Vlad Naslas: " I tried to cover as wide a range of styles as possible, from the rawness and feel of the classic '60's and '70's soul and funk, through the more clinical '80's sounds, to new programmed and off-the-wall stuff." What you won't find is musically related material played back-to-back in different key signatures (as in Bass Legends , reviewed May '95). A few scales are provided, but for the most part you'll need a sampler or computer editor capable of time compression and expansion if you want to use a riff in more than one key and maintain the same tempo. How good is the guitar playing? Depends on who you ask. In addition to the usual Keyboard suspects who listen to review discs, a few six- string slingers from our sister publication Guitar Player got in on the act this time around. The most positive comments we heard from the latter were "competent playing", and "fairly authentic figures." Most of the feedback, though, (no pun intended) was more critical. "I am not impressed" and "could have been played tighter, more on the money." Human looseness is what many sequence-maniacs crave, however, as long as it's not too loose (which this reviewer doesn't feel is an issue with this disc). ER thinks Funk Guitar is " a great resource for the loop freak, In the '70's," he adds, "a single guitar player would easily play this many variations in the course of a gig. Here in the '90's, each riff can be an entire song. It all sounds like the same player, but it really grooves." A mixture of tones and effects appears on Funk Guitar , from squeaky -clean to mud-caked fuzz. Wah-wah, phase shifter, filter, octave divider, talk box, and vocoder are among the effect types offered. The end of the disc offers some pulsating, rhythmic oddities, great for trance and ambient styles. A majority of the meat-and-potatoes riffs, though, seem to emanate from the same clean set-up. One GP editor commented, "The tone is reminiscent of the perky Funk sound derived from plugging straight into the board - that chirpy, dry, certainly not ampy sound that's been heard on records from Slave to Michael Jackson." No real complaints from the Keyboard side in terms of tone. We can think of lots of ways to take signals, especially clean ones, and twist them digitally into unrecognisable hairy monsters. Funk Guitar supporting documentation is excellent. Each track is given a name, and whenever appropriate a suggested loop point, key signature, tempo, and effects lists. In all, there are 23 pages of information - quite a lot compared to most CD's we review. Okay, Funk Guitar may not be the ultimate funk guitar resource, in our opinion, but it is a darn good one. There's a bucket load of material well-suited for a variety of styles. Just don't expect to hear alternate versions of single riffs in several different keys. We'll certainly put this one to good use, but we'll keep an eye open for other guitar-only discs as well.