SHAUN’S CREATIVE ROCK
As he continues his series focusing on intervals Shaun Baxter ventures ‘beyond the octave’ to exploit even more adventurous sounds.
Shaun Baxter continues his series on how specific note combinations can enhance your playing. This month: Compound Intervals.
This current series of lessons has been devoted to employing different interval skips within the Mixolydian mode or scale. So far, we have looked at each interval in sequence, all within an octave (2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6hs, 7ths, octaves). In this lesson, we are going to look at ways of using intervals greater than an octave to create very ear-catching lines and effects.
Focusing on a particular concept, such as 10ths, will force you to think of the notes of a scale in new ways and provide you with many new and fresh-sounding ideas.
Diagram 1 shows what each of the intervals that we have studied so far are called when played an octave higher (a 2nd becomes a 9th; a 3rd becomes a 10th etc). But it’s also possible to go beyond two octaves and play 16th, 17th etc, and you should definitely experiment with those; however, we will keep within two octaves for the purposes of this particular lesson.
The wide leaps involved in playing compound intervals tend to make lines that feature them sound quite ‘whacky’. They also lend themselves to producing counterpoint as there is an inherent ‘call and response’ quality when low notes are contrasted with high ones. Also, because the distance between two notes is so large, it can present considerable technical problems when trying to play certain ideas at speed, so techniques like picking and fretting-hand tapping, and hybrid picking become most useful.
The transcription shows the technical solutions that I used for each challenge; however, where, for example, hybrid picking is shown, you may prefer to use alternate picking if that is where your strength lies. The main thing is that you need to find a working compromise between physical ease and producing a pleasing musical result (sonically and tonally). Are the dynamics even? Are the notes in time? Is each note in tune? Does the chosen technical approach allow you to play with expression? Sometimes you may find that you just need to bite the bullet and set the time aside to build your skills on a particular approach, if that yields the best results.
As in previous lessons, once you have absorbed the various concepts featured within this lesson’s solo study, you should aim to apply the same principles, not just to other patterns of Mixolydian, but also of all the other scales that you know too.
The ideas contained within this and all the previous solo studies were generated in a very systematic (and often mathematical) way: generating as many permutations as possible before trying them all out; selecting the best-sounding ones (to establish a working palette) and discarding the rest.
To speed up the ‘auditioning’ process, it is often helpful to programme each idea (using MIDI) so that you can listen back to it objectively when it’s played up to speed: it’ll help you to imagine someone else playing the same thing because often you’ll be hearing each idea for the very first time.
Finally, regarding the backing track (see Diagram 2), most drummers would write out the drum part in 6/8; however, for ease of reading on guitar, I have stuck to 4/4, viewing the bass drum pattern as a quarter-note triplet rhythm. If your rhythm reading isn’t great; don’t worry about it: just read the tab and use your ears. And enjoy the learning.
NEXT MONTH Shaun brings us another solo to learn using more Compound Intervals
“Because the distance between intervals is so large, it can present technical problems”