FRETBOARD FLUENCY
There’s a real Dorian flavour to GT this month and here Martin Goulding shows how to navigate the neck using Dorian 5ths and 6ths.
Martin Goulding gets your fingers flying as he navigates the Dorian mode in 5ths and 6ths.
Welcome to this month’s column, already the fourth part in our series looking at developing fretboard fluency. Following on from our last lesson, where we worked through a multipleelement ‘master exercise’ in A Dorian, and with the associated chord, scale, arpeggio and intervallic pattern in 3rds and 4ths arranged in positions 1 and 4, this month we’ll revisit the same idea this time using 5ths and 6ths. In order to develop legato and alternate picking approaches to scale and arpeggio playing alongside one another, this month we’ll practice the Dorian mode using a legato approach, with the minor 7 arpeggio forms played using the sweep picking technique combined with hammer-ons and pull-offs. All intervallic patterns will be played as usual using alternate picking and we’ll be starting each time on a downstroke. Playing through the scale using intervals of 5ths and 6ths may look a little challenging at first, so start by breaking each example down two beats at a time and work on memorising each four-note ‘fragment’ before moving on. Pay particular attention to the recommended fingerings as well as the direction of the pick strokes, which form the basis of the technique. As with all exercise routines, shake out the hands and arms as soon as you feel the onset of any tension or fatigue. In the third part of this lesson, we’ll continue developing our recognition of the strongest intervals in the scale – the chord tones or in this case notes of the minor 7 arpeggio (root, 5th and degrees). And, following last month’s lesson, where we used upper and lower neighbour tones to surround or ‘enclose’ each chord tone, this month we’ll apply chromatic enclosures to the root note of our minor 7 arpeggio form in positions 1 and 4. This will help to consolidate our visualisation of the key intervals as well as developing a new vocabulary of jazz inspired lines which we can use alongside our existing Dorian ideas when improvising.
playing the examples in 5ths and 6ths might look a bit challenging so break each one down two beats at a time
NEXT MONTH Martin looks at more inventive ways for navigating your fretboard