Most players who want to sound more intervallic end up doing the same thing: grabbing random big jumps and hoping it sounds cool. It rarely does. Real intervallic improvisation is a skill you build deliberately — and once you understand how intervals feel on the fretboard, how they sound to the ear, and how to organise them into vocabulary, your soloing takes on a dimension that nothing else can give you.
What you’ll get out of this lesson: By the end of this livestream you’ll have a clear, three-part roadmap for developing intervallic playing — mapping intervals across the fretboard, classifying them by their sonic character, and converting scale shapes you already know into compelling intervallic lines.
What intervals actually are (and why they matter even if you don’t think you’re playing them)
An interval is simply the space between any two notes in music. Intervals can happen harmonically — two notes sounding together — or melodically, one after the other, the way you’d think of an arpeggio or a broken chord. In this lesson we’re focused entirely on the melodic side, using intervals to shape single-note solos. Here’s the thing though: every melody you play is technically intervallic, even the simple stuff. So whether you want to sound like an intervallic monster or not, understanding intervals will improve any kind of playing. When people say they want to play more intervallically, what they usually mean is using wider jumps — larger than a third — to create that angular, technically impressive quality that makes a line sound less clichéd and more adventurous.
The five core exercises for mapping intervals across the fretboard
The first step is getting every interval physically under your fingers — both in position and travelling up and down the neck on every string pair. Work through these five exercises applied to any scale shape you know, practising each in position first and then across string pairs from the lowest point on the neck to the highest:
- Ascending from each scale degree
- Descending from each scale degree
- Alternating ascending and descending
- Compounding intervals
- Moving intervallic structures
Start with thirds — from each note of the scale, jump to the note three steps away before continuing up. Then apply the same idea to fourths, fifths, sixths, and sevenths. For sevenths in the same position, use left-hand barring so that one finger covers both strings at the same fret. Once you are comfortable in position, move each interval up the neck on a single string pair: low E and A, then A and D, then D and G, and so on. This string-pair approach is where you genuinely start to break out of box shapes and travel the neck.
The more intervallic the idea, or the more obscure the idea, the better it works. If you take something with a bit more character to it, the listener’s ear is drawn to it, recognises it as a structure, as a pattern, and then when you move it around, it’s validated because they can recognise this thing that’s moving.
Classifying intervals by melodic consonance and dissonance
This is the part that most players skip — and it’s the part that separates reactive intervallic playing from intentional intervallic playing. Just as chords have consonance and dissonance, so do melodic intervals. Think of it as the difference between smooth and jarring. There are 13 intervals from a unison to an octave, and each one has a unique character. Here they are ordered from most consonant to most dissonant:
- Perfect 5th
- Perfect 4th
- Major 6th
- Major 3rd
- minor 3rd
- minor 6th
- Major 2nd
- minor 7th
- minor 2nd
- Major 7th
- Tritone (b5)
UNDERSTANDING THE SONIC IMPACT OF A MELODIC INTERVAL ALLOWS US TO APPLY OUR INTENT TO A LICK.
Go one step further and build a personal reference for each interval using your own adjectives. Does it sound smooth, angular, open, closed, exposed, happy, sad, scary? The more vivid and personal your reference, the more quickly you’ll reach for the right interval when you’re improvising.
Building vocabulary: using ease and difficulty deliberately
Once you can play the intervals, the question becomes how to choose them. One approach is to improvise a line and ask yourself: where is the easiest interval to reach from this note? Start building lines that way. Then flip it — ask where the hardest place to jump is, and work out a technique (string skipping, tapping, hybrid picking, position shifting, left-hand stretching, or partial barring) to get there. The reason for making life hard for yourself is that you’re more likely to create something unique when the idea doesn’t fall naturally under the fingers. The guitar is laid out perfectly for seconds and thirds; reaching for things that don’t fall easily helps you escape those clichéd, arpeggio-sounding lines and arrive somewhere more obscure and personal.
Practical ways to create intervallic lines from shapes you already know
You don’t need to start from scratch. There are several methods for turning familiar scale shapes into intervallic ideas:
- Taking a lick and expanding it by displacing notes — shift one or more notes of a phrase to a different octave or string to widen the intervals instantly.
- Limiting to certain string sets using I Ching hexagrams — the 64 hexagrams can be read as string groups, giving you a structured way to explore pentatonic ideas across different string combinations. The hexagram diagram below shows the groupings:
- Pentatonic sweeping — applying sweep-picking mechanics to pentatonic shapes to generate wide, flowing intervallic lines.
- Digital patterns and sequencing — creating repeating numerical patterns within your scale shapes that naturally produce wider leaps.
Taking it further: Once you are comfortable with ascending intervals in position and across string pairs, add descending versions of all five exercises. Then combine ascending and descending in the same phrase. From there, start building a small written vocabulary — write out licks, transcribe licks you love, and consciously tag each one with the intervals it uses and the adjectives you would assign to its character. Over time your ear will start guiding you to the right interval in the moment rather than you having to think it through consciously.
Your homework: Pick one scale shape you know well and spend 15 minutes this week practising every ascending interval — thirds through sevenths — both in position and across at least two string pairs travelling up the neck. While you do it, listen carefully and write down one adjective for each interval that captures its character to you personally. Next session, repeat with the descending versions.