Ella Feingold and Charlie Hunter: A Rhythmic Symposium

When it comes to rhythm guitar, there are acknowledged masters—artists like Jimmy Nolen, Catfish Collins, Wah Wah Watson, Curtis Mayfield—whose work deserves deep analysis and interpretation. But the discourse on each and every one of these players is sadly thin. That’s because rhythm—especially when it’s funky—is ineffable, and it’s much easier to discuss licks, riffs, melodies, or gear than it is to talk about the give-and-take nuances that make your body want to move when you hear a song. Like Icarus and the sun, if we try to describe a groove too closely we’re setting up our demise. In the attempt to convey those truly human elements of musical performance, we not only fail, but risk rendering ourselves … unfunky.YouTubeIt’s not just words that fall short—musical notation can’t quite capture a groove either. Though it does well at communicating a composer’s intended notes and rhythms, transcribing the intricacies of feel is a task that often overcomplicates something so intrinsic to human nature to the point of illegibility. In learning from the greats of funk, soul, and r&b guitar, we simply have to use our ears as best we can.“I think we probably share like 60 to 75 percent of our musical DNA. And then the extra stuff that we have adds something to it.” —Charlie HunterFor some, that only goes so far, so we need visual aides. And that’s how most people—probably—discover Ella Feingold, the Grammy-winning guitarist breaking down the intricacies of those masters of rhythm guitar and many others on Instagram and TikTok, making some of the greatest strides yet in the education—and enjoyment—of funky feel. We’re talking deep, below-the-surface details, like pick attack and note placement—potentially nerd-level stuff that she delivers in a warm, approachable style that makes her videos so engaging and rewatchable. (In fact, if there’s one person I’ve learned the most about guitar from in the last couple of years, it is Ella.)Feingold’s rhythmic research is backed by a deep resume that spans work as an orchestrator, composer, and producer. As a guitarist, Feingold has been tapped to play alongside an impressive list of leaders that includes Erykah Badu, Silk Sonic, Bootsy Collins, and Jay-Z. Charlie Hunter is one of many who found Feingold through Instagram. After Hunter—who came up in the ’90s on Blue Note Records, famously wielding a hybrid guitar/bass instrument that set the jazz-funk scene on high alert—scrolled across Feingold’s videos, the two quickly took it to their DMs and established a friendship. Collab talks started soon after. Feingold, who has worked exclusively as a side musician save for a few classical piano pieces, jumped at the opportunity to release a record under her name alongside Hunter, who she lovingly calls “a musical hero.”
The two convened at Pilot Studios in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, with producer Alan Evans—best known as the drummer for Soulive—for a few short days to create Different Strokes for Different Folks, a rhythm symposium of the highest order. It’s a record that’s earnestly old-school by way of a simple approach: capturing a live-off-the-floor two-way conversation between singular instrumentalists. Feingold’s guitar—punchy and percussive but still delicate and detailed—lies on the right side of the stereo field throughout, communing with Hunter’s counterpoint of pulsing bass, which sits near the center, and snare-like guitar chords and knotty riffs on the left. No-frills drums, added by Hunter, pull together the sound, unifying the feel and tying the record to groove masters like Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone—the latter referenced in the album title and its opening track, “There’s Still a Riot Goin’ On.”
“Sly is just my god, my king of dark funk.” —Ella FeingoldDifferent Strokes for Different Folks is a masterwork of minimal funk: there are no solos, and melodies arise from rhythm itself. It’s an album that draws attention to the finer details of rhythm guitar, and to the communication between rhythmic elements that are often relegated to background duty. Most importantly, it’s an album that will make you feel something.
We got together with Feingold and Hunter to talk rhythm, recording, and the art of musical conversation.After first meeting on Instagram, what was the catalyst for making the record happen, and how did it come together?Ella Feingold: I’ve always been a fan of Charlie’s, obviously. Eventually, it led to just talking all the time, about rhythm and all the stuff we love that doesn’t really get discussed a lot. We had a lot in common, and at some point, he’s like, “Yeah, we should make a record together…” which kind of terrified me.Charlie Hunter: I think we probably share like 60 to 75 percent music DNA. And then the extra stuff that we have adds something to it. I have all this really old knowledge that nobody cares about, like 1920s stuff. And then I always tell people, “You want to know about this one Motown recording from 1968?” Call Ella, because she’s going to know exactly who played on that and exactly every part. Feingold: We knew we wanted to do a record together. But in terms of the drumming, we had talked about everything from programming an MPC to just having a funk box—a Rhythm King, a Rhythm Ace—to getting drummers. We had talked to Steve Jordan, and Steve was like, “I’m down.” We had talked to Questlove, Questlove was down. And I know this sounds like the douchiest thing in the world to say—because to have musicians like that that are interested in working with us is the grandest honor—Charlie and I, we just wanted the conversation to be between the two of us. We wanted the rhythm to be this mantra that feels good, that moves you to the conversation we’re having, but that’s not the forefront of the conversation.So it started with us going in, knowing that the rhythm is going to come from him and I, but not exactly sure how. And then with me programming a little bit with the MPC and playing along. Then Charlie replaced everything and killed it on drums. So Charlie’s the drummer on the record. And what I think is cool about that is we wanted it kind of like … when Sly Stone plays drums, and when Stevie Wonder plays drums, or when Lenny Kravitz, whoever, like an artist that plays their own music, does the drum part, it’s going to be exactly what it needs to be and nothing else, with no other filler, no other musicianship, no “look what I can do.” It’s going to be exactly what needs to be there. And that’s exactly what Charlie did.Hunter: Because I don’t take pride in my drumming, we wanted it to just be as basic as possible.Ella, there are so many songs you talk about on your social media that I’ve heard a million times, but you’ll show how a part goes and then I’ll hear it so differently. It blows my mind. You have such a good ear for really fine details, and I know a lot of people feel that way.
Feingold: I feel like I get too much credit. A lot of that stuff just comes from what I can’t do—meaning I don’t really solo, I don’t know modes, I don’t really know a lot of scales. There’s so much I don’t know. My ear just goes to the place that makes my ear happy.
I think some of it has come from being on the road in the early 2000s, when there were no stems, no stem-making software, there wasn’t really social media. You had to learn a show from a rehearsal CD or an MP3 and had to pick out guitar parts. You really had to do this kind of deep listening to try and hear stuff.“If you have a good feel and something to say and a lived experience, you got this.”—Ella FeingoldThere are two references to Sly Stone on the album—the title is a lyric from “Everyday People,” and the song “There’s Still a Riot Goin’ On” is a hat-tip to Sly’s 1971 record.
Hunter: That’s Ella’s department. She is a Sly-o-phile.
Feingold: Sly is just my god, my king of dark funk. You obviously have George Clinton and James Brown, but something about Sly, for me, it’s just the greasiest, most raw, tasteful … it’s something that just hits me in the chest. A lot of my musical aesthetic was from Sly and from him playing all the instruments. And then all the music I adore—D’Angelo and J Dilla and some Prince—it all comes from Sly.
If I can get political, I’m a trans woman, and we did that album in February, a month after the inauguration, after Trump was going after trans people, taking away life-saving medicine and hormones and fucking with our passports and all kinds of stuff. And I felt a lot of turmoil. So going into the record, it just felt like there was a riot going on—externally in the world and internally within. And I just wanted some of that to be reflected in the conversation. Not just because I love Sly and the Sly references. Certainly “different strokes for different folks” came out of the lyrics, but it’s cool because “different strokes” can also be referring to Charlie’s stroke and my stroke on the instrument, and there’s also the Muhammad Ali reference—knocking people the fuck out.Tell me about the guitars you used on the record, and the tunings.Feingold: I used a Mexican Strat in inverted tuning—it’s E–A–D–G–B–E, but it’s high to low, not low to high, so familiar voicings become distant relatives. Where did the inverted tuning come from?Feingold: From my buddy Blake Mills [who learned it from Chris Weisman]. I even have the text message where he said, “I’m about to change your life.” For me, the appeal was it gave me the rhythm sound I wanted in terms of attacking the high strings first. And the tuning felt a little familiar, because it’s related to standard. Although anything above a triad, the overtone series sort of gets put on its head—all the color tones are on the low strings and all the roots and thirds are on the high strings. But it opened up this whole new world of harmony that was like Claus Ogerman harmony—close position stuff you’d hear Nat King Cole or George Shearing play. What I love is it’s sort of similar to Charlie’s whole journey, which he took long before I did, of, “What does this thing want to be?” And then finding a sound with it.“The first time we played, I was like, ‘This sounds like a gigantic lawnmower guitar that can take buildings down.’” —Charlie HunterHunter: I think there’s also something really special that happens because of Ella’s inverted tuning and the fact that it’s basically in E, while my hybrid tuning is basically an F. Every tune, we each have a different set of open notes and a different overtone series that makes the instruments do this really cool shimmery thing together. The first time we played, I heard that and I was like, “This is dope. This sounds like a gigantic lawnmower guitar that can take buildings down. All right, let’s go do this.”Charlie, your journey with your instrument has been well documented at this point, but catch us up a little bit.
Hunter: I started on this 8-string guitar, and that was really a bad idea. And I made a bunch of records on it. I just was like, “Hey, Ralph Novak [of Novax Guitars], can you make this? I have an idea. Could be cool.” Never thinking this was going to be my career. Before I knew it, I had a deal with Blue Note. And then I'm like, “My god, I can’t really do this very well. It’s so hard. What am I doing?” It took me years to figure out, “What does this instrument want to do?”
So I hooked up with Hybrid Guitars and I settled on this thing I’m calling the Big 6. What this instrument does best is really more like a drum set, where you have bass and guitar and it’s all about the counterpoint. It has an extra long scale—the lowest string is 31 inches and the highest is 28.
I have it tuned F, Bb, Eb—which are the lower three strings of a bass, up a half-step—which sends me into a hell of transposition, but sounds so much better than E. And the guitar [side] is Bb, Eb, Ab, which is essentially A, D, G up a half-step.Ella Feingold’s Gear GuitarFender Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster with Fender Custom Shop Fat ’60s pickups and inverted tuningAmp1968 Fender Princeton ReverbEffectsEnsoniq ASR-10 used for envelope filter Strings and PicksLa Bella inverted tuning custom signature set (.046 E;.032 B;.017 G;.026 D;.016 A;.011 E)D'Addario Ukulele 3.0 mm Charlie Hunter's GearGuitarHybrid Guitars Hybrid 6 (aka Big 6)AmpTwo-Rock Studio SignatureAmpeg B-15Acme Audio Motown DIEffectsSurfyBear Compact DeluxeStringsThomastik-Infeld Jazz Flat Wound (bass side)Thomastik-Infeld Pure Nickel Round Wound (guitar side)What was the biggest revelation that came from working together?
Hunter: For me, it’s just that we have a great time playing together, and I just learned a ton, you know? And if I can take that away from any situation, it’s a win.
Feingold: The gift of working with Charlie is it gave me the confidence to make my own music. Because I’ve spent my entire career helping other people with their music, playing on their records or producing. I’ve never invested in my own music because I always thought you have to make your own, like, Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper’s—you’re going to be working, writing for years. And it was like, we went in there, we had some ideas over a couple of months, and it turned into over an hour of music.
And it just was like, “Wow, I’m overthinking this stuff like crazy.” If you have a good feel and something to say and a lived experience, you got this. That was kind of an unexpected gift. After Charlie and I finished mixing the record, I bought a four-track and I made an EP. I was really inspired by just being around Charlie.
So if you have something to say in the moment, that’s it. That’s the most important thing.