Intervals – Pedal On

June 25, 2019June 23, 2019 jmfreeland guitar, Intervals

Intervals Across the Neck – Fourths

There’s a lot here, and for good reason. On their own, fourths are pretty useful. They work great as double stops, they’re inverted fifths from the top note, the ♯4/ ♯11 is the heart of Lydian & shares the same address as the blue note, and they’re almost always easy to play. Something I’ve only recently learned (from Truefire’s Interval Insights) is how many great approaches and departures there are from fourths. Hammers up to the major 2nd, up from the major third, and even up to the fifth or from the minor third all sound great from the perfect fourth. I’ve yet to experiment much with the ♯4 and it’s neighbors, but my sense is the 5th provides a nice resolution.

Hammering the root up to the second creates a nice minor third of its own and also provides the top two thirds of a C-shape triad on the lower string if you bring your pinky into the mix. You can’t help but hear Hendrix with this lick.

March 22, 2019 jmfreeland guitar, Intervals

Intervals Across the Neck – 3rds

Thirds are a lot more useful as double stops than seconds, and obviously they’re key building blocks of most chords. Luckily, no stretching or string skipping is required to grab major or minor thirds across the neck. They work nicely hammered on to/from fourths or from major seconds as well.

March 21, 2019 jmfreeland guitar, Intervals

Intervals Across the Neck – 2nds

This may be the least useful individual diagram I ever post, but for the sake of completeness, I am starting my run through of intervals with major/minor 2nds. I worked through Truefire’s Interval Insights course, and I now feel even more confident that knowing where to grab all of the intervals on the neck is a worthwhile skill to have. I can’t demonstrate how to use them in context here, as Rich does, but it should be pretty simple to lay out the locations of each set to refer to for your own experiments.

Seconds are neither particularly consonant nor comfortable to grab. I kept stretches to a three fret minimum in this diagram, as going out of your way to grab either of these doesn’t seem necessary.