The following is a rough synopsis of the above video:
There are two key steps for mastering INTERVALLIC IMPROVISATION
1) Familiarising yourself with intervals – their sound and shape on the fretboard
2) Building a vocabulary – eg writing licks, transcribing licks, creating patterns etc
You’ll also need to develop sufficient technique to play these ideas on the instrument. These techniques include String skipping, Tapping, hybrid picking, position shifting, left hand stretching and partial barring. All of the exercises can be used in conjunction with these techniques but I highly recommend not to get overwhelmed trying apply it to all of them,
Theres nothing wrong with doubling down and just exploring one of these – most players identity is determined by how they chose to focus their attention and development
Let’s get started with getting familiar with the intervals on the fretboard, developing your ear and building the necessary technique.
Here are the five key exercises and sequences to get started: Practice them in position and practice them on string pairs travelling up the fretboard…
1) Ascending from each scale degree
2) Descending from each scale degree
3) Alternating Ascending and Descending
4) Compounding intervals
5) Moving intervallic structures
So now that we can play these things, how do we chose when to use them?
Do we just randomly fit them together?
You can definitely do that, and over time your ear will start to help you get musical at that.
One of the things I used to do was create licks and lines and I’d think more about the fingering and practicality of playing, and I would intentionally embrace it or try and make it difficult
So I might improvise a line and then go – where’s an easy interval for me to get to from the current note, and start building lines like that. Then I’d also do the opposite, I’d think “where’s the hardest place to jump to in this fingering from this note? how can I get there? what techniques can I use?” The reason id make life hard for myself is because you’re more likely to create something unique if it doesnt fall under the fingers easily and create a line that’s less cliche or guitaristy and more obscure sounding. The guitar is laid out perfectly for seconds and thirds, so reaching for things that dont fall under the fingers easily helps you get our of those cliche arpeggio sounding intervals
Part 2 – Learning the quality of intervals:
Theres a more intentional way of using intervals and this is the thing that I dont think many people talk about or know about it – Its the concept of melodic consonance and dissonance
There are 13 intervals from a unison to an octave and each one has a unique set of characteristics. Just like how chords and harmonic intervals have consonance and dissonance, melodies have consonance and dissonance. You might better be able to conceptualise it by thinking “smooth” or “jarring” instead of consonant and dissonant.
Knowing this is useful because…
UNDERSTANDING THE SONIC IMPACT OF A MELODIC INTERVAL ALLOWS US TO APPLY OUR INTENT TO A LICK.
Here are the intervals From Consonant to Dissonant
- Perfect 5th
- Perfect 4th
- Major 6th
- Major 3rd
- minor 3rd
- minor 6th
- Major 2nd
- minor 7th
- minor 2nd
- Major 7
- Tritone (b5)
I would then go one step further and start trying to build a personal reference for each interval using adjectives or other qualities… Does it sound smooth, angular, open , closed, exposed, consonant, dissonant, happy, sad, scary etc.
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The last thing we’re going to explore are more practical ways to develop intervallic ideas
I want to share a couple of concepts for how I take capes and turn them into more intervallic ideas –
– Taking a lick and expanding it out by displacing notes
– Limitation to certain string sets – I Ching hexagrams – strip king pentatonics
– Digital streaming
– Pentatonic sweeping
Here’s the I-Ching Hexagrams, You can see these as string groups…
