Daily Archives : July 31, 2014

Scale-tone triads 3

Playing with another guitar player can get messy if you’re both playing the same thing. Sometimes it’s ok. If not, then scale-tone triads are a nice tool for providing some variety.

I gave you some ideas in the last post. Here’s a bit more detail. This will mean more to you if you’ve done some experimenting  beforehand.

 

Arpeggios

When you play notes in a chord individually as single notes, you have an arpeggio.

Here are the G major scale-tone triads as arpeggios.

 

 

Play through this a few times to get comfortable with it. Then move on to using it in a progression.

 

 Looping

Loop the following progression.

Now play any G major scale-tone triad arpeggio while the loop plays. Some will sound more dissonant than others. Find the ones that you like.

Keep the loop playing and go through the entire sequence of scale-tone arpeggios. Then try jumping randomly from arpeggio to arpeggio.

Be more specific and go from the G major arpeggio to the E minor arpeggio and back. Now go from the G major arpeggio to the B minor arpeggio. Choose any two arpeggios and use only those for the entire progression. Change the rhythm. Play only two notes from each arpeggio.

 

Song parts

The more simple you are about what you play, the more it will sound like a part that you wrote for the song.

Now invent a few progressions using chords in the key of G major. Loop those and go through the process above. Try to pay attention to the sounds that you like and make note of them in your notebook. These will wind up making it into your songs as unique song parts. This is how you develop a personal voice. This is how you give yourself choice beyond playing the same thing as the other guy.