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Topic: Whole new look at the fretboard |
Jim Pollard
From:
Cedar Park, Texas, USA
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Posted 30 Oct 2020 5:30 am |
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| Or it could also be that I'm slow on the uptake. Had an epiphany the other night as I was trying to fall asleep by working out chord inversions in my head (What? How do you distract yourself enough to fall asleep?) Anyway it occurred to me to just think of each positions as intervals. For instance on my C6 eight string. Low to high ACEGACEG. Instead of thinking that though, just think 61356135.All of a sudden I just saw the fretboard laid out in a perfectly logical way that made sense! Have barely begun to sus out all the implications of this but I'm looking forward to it! |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 30 Oct 2020 7:20 am
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That is one way to look at it. The intervals could also look like 1 b3 5 b7 1 b3 5 b7 if you are playing Am7.
Everything depends on the harmonic context. |
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Jim Pollard
From:
Cedar Park, Texas, USA
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Posted 30 Oct 2020 7:28 am
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| Whoa! Bill! YES. That's soo cool |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 30 Oct 2020 8:08 am
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Jim,
pick up a music theory book. There is lots of mind blowing epiphanies to have when you study music theory. |
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Jim Pollard
From:
Cedar Park, Texas, USA
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Posted 30 Oct 2020 11:17 am
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| Bill, do you have any that you found especially helpful? |
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David Knutson
From:
Cowichan Valley, Canada
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Posted 30 Oct 2020 11:40 am
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I try to stay aware of the intervals between string pairs as well, especially for improvising.
In Jim's tuning above . . . 6 to 1 is a minor 3rd, as Bill pointed out - 1 to 3 is Major 3rd - 3 to 5 is min.3rd - 5 to 6 is Maj.2nd, etc. And then there's all the 4ths and 5ths between split pairs of strings. It never ends. 
_________________
David K |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 30 Oct 2020 12:40 pm
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| Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book was great for me but there are a lot of them out there. |
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Gene Tani
From:
Pac NW
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Paul McEvoy
From:
Baltimore, USA
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Posted 31 Oct 2020 8:55 am
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I'm no expert but I think one huge trick that probably everyone knows is that the 6th in the tuning are upside down 3rds.
So your high C string and your low E string are a minor 6th apart, but really E is the major third of C. And your high E string and your G string are a major 6th apart but really G is the minor third of E.
So you can switch back and forth between the two string sets to play a major scale.
To play a D major scale, play 2nd fret on the C and E strings for D major, then switch to the open E and G strings for E minor, go up on those strings 2 frets for F# minor, back to the C and E for G and A major and so on. You have a harmonized scale that way (top note is the melody note and the bottom note fills out the chord).
One important note with this is that for the minor chords, there aren't other notes on the same fret that fill out the chord, you just get the two notes (like there's no C# on the 2nd fret so the F# chord can't have it's fifth.
I think this is the "western swing" way, no slants. I just saw it as an exercise in Cindy Cashdollar's Homespun video and it made a lot of sense. I dip in and out of playing steel and I think I learned this already but forgot it. |
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