Hello everyone!

I’ve been cleaning up a lot of the text for the GuitArchitecture book releases and wanted to post a lesson that uses some ideas and approaches from my Melodic Patterns book (available here). But first, I need to talk about…

The Modal Microscope

When I explain using modes to students – I typically use the analogy of a microscope to discuss viewing modes conceptually on multiple levels.

Let’s say I want to solo over a D min7 chord. So I’ll put that “under the microscope”.

On the 2x setting, I see that a number of minor modes will work over D min7. In this case, I’ll choose Dorian.

Going to the 4x setting on the microscope, I see that Dorian is made up of a series of interlocking 2-string patterns.

Note:

If you’re unfamiliar with the 2-string approach I’m discussing I definitely recommend that you check out part 2, part 3a or part 3b of my guide to modes posts.

If I go to the 8x setting, I can break the 2-string patterns down into 1 string shapes and going to a higher resolution (16x) I can see those shapes as individual notes. At the 16x setting – maybe I’m looking at the individual notes of D min7 (D, F, A and C) and thinking about accenting those notes in my playing.

If I now go out to the 1x setting – I see that D Dorian is just a subset of C major. The thing is if you go playing a bunch of C major scales over D dorian and don’t resolve anything (or focus on the chord tones) – you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle.

It’s good to understand modes on multiple levels but if you see how all of the related modes interlock with each other, then (using the microscope analogy), you can deal with using modes with chords on the 1x or 2x level but use information from the higher levels in your playing.

Putting this to use:

I’ve posted a number of technical things here and decided to use a much lower gain approach than normal and slow things down a bit. The same practice points as before (Tone, Tension and Timing) apply – but this exercise is all about how to find variations in small things. (If you like the technical things don’t worry I’ve included some deceptively tricky variations as well!)

Let’s take a 2-string G Major shape.

The nice things about 2-string patterns like this is that the fingering repeats at each octave. (So you only need to remember one fingering for a multi octave run).

One process I explore in my Melodic Patterns book is systematically breaking down patterns to get new sounds out of them. In this case, I’m going to remove the 2nd and 4th note from the pattern which leaves me with this shape:

Looking closely at the notes reveals that I have a G, B, C and E which is a C maj7 arpeggio. By limiting it to a 2-string shape, I can move it in octaves and the fingering stays the same.

Note:

The drums are the same pattern I’ve used on my other posts, so you can play against it for any other the things I post here (more info below).

.(I’ve added a C maj7 chord in front of this to give a sense of tonality.)

Going to a higher resolution

I know that G parent major also contains A Dorian – which works well over A minor chords. So playing this shape over A minor the notes – now become: b7 (G), 9 (B), b3 (C) and 5th (E). Which has a cool sound associated with it. (I’ve subbed out A min7 for C maj 7 here for the opening chord).

Sequencing the ideas:

However cool any scale or arpeggio is, playing it in a linear up and down manner will only get you so far. By playing groups of notes in short sequences, the arpeggio gains a little melodic drive.

In this first variation I’ll play groups of 3 (So I’m playing 3 ascending notes from each note of the arpeggio). One way to immediately make this more interesting is to break the 3 note grouping out of the triplet rhythm. Playing the same pattern in 16ths – displaces the first note of each pattern across different beats.

Here’s the same idea descending: (This is another case where the microscope idea comes into play. The A note ending the phrase isn’t part of the 4 note arpeggio – but gives the descending line a sense of resolution. Since I’m seeing and hearing the phrase as an A minor tonality – I’m resolving it to the tonic (A), third (C) or 5th (E).

For a little variety – I’ve taken the same idea but played it as sextuplets instead. I’ve notated the first bar of it (as the notes are the same as the patterns above) – but I play it ascending and descending on the mp3 below.

5 alive

To get a little more mileage out of this arpeggio, I’m going to play the notes in groups of 5. Here it is in a 1/16 note rhythm (I’ve left off the last 2 notes to keep it on one line).

Technical note:

Watch the position skip on the A/D and the B/ G strings!!

Here it is as septuplets (5 notes to the beat).

Changing the note order

You may have noticed that all of these arpeggios use a linear note order in the sequence. So if G is the first note of the 1st pattern and B is the 2nd note – every pattern moves in straight ascending or descending order.

3 Note Pattern: G, B, C/B, C, E/C, E, G

in note order = 1,2, 3/2, 3, 4/ 3, 4, 1 etc.

But what if we varied up the note order? In this example, I’m going to take play groups of 3 descending notes on each ascending note of the arpeggio. (So instead of playing note numbers 1,2 3 – I’m playing 3-2-1).

Here it is descending:

Displacing the rhythm by a 1/16 makes it cooler.

And again, descending:

Obligatory Plug

I’m only scratching the surface of what’s possible here. The big takeway here is – if you really go deep on even something small – you can probably find interesting things that will work in your playing.

I would also be remiss in not mentioning that my melodic patterns book shows every possible unique combination of notes (and rests) in 1 – 6 note shapes and then shows how to combine them into longer sequences (up to 9 note patterns). It is a deep resource that can open all manner of melodic and compositional doors (and makes a great gift as well!) ; )

Tones

I went with another tonal variation here and tried some of the lower gain settings on the Scuffham amp AU. It’s a cool product and I should have a review up soon. In the meantime – he’s a screenshot of the laptop set up I used to track this:

Click to see full size

I‘ve mentioned this in the laptop guitar posts – but the varispeed is a useful plug-in! When I get bored with a metronome sound – I’ll throw a drum loop into the AU fileplayer and then use the varispeed to control the speed of the loop.

As always, I hope this helps!

-SC

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