Chanking is a guitar performance technique in funk music that involves both "choking" the guitar neck and strumming the strings percussively to create a distinctive-sounding riff commonly associated with the genre. [1] The technique was popularized by the music of James Brown, later spreading to other genres and performers.
The name "chanking" is either a portmanteau of the words "choking" and "yanking", referring to the procedure involved in the technique, or simply onomatopoeia - a word that sounds like what it describes.
Chanking was developed by James Brown band guitarist Jimmy Nolen as a part of his signature "chicken scratch" sound. The technique appeared first with a double-chank on the first backbeat of each bar in " Out of Sight" (1964), [2] and in " Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (1965), a song that typified much of Brown's subsequent work. [3] "Chicken scratching" itself differs slightly: the fretting hand lightly squeezes the chord on the neck, then releases suddenly to produce a scratch chord. [4] In particular, Brown used chanking against syncopated bass to produce a unique blend of sounds. [1]
The technique of chanking spread from funk to reggae music. [3] [5] Alan Warner, then of The Foundations, also utilized the technique, which left its sound legacy in Europop. [5]