New ideas are a great thing. Searching for new ideas is part of what keeps us most engaged with life and with music. When it comes to writing music, improvising, and practicing, however, more is not necessarily better. In fact, too many ideas can quickly become trite, confusing, distracted, flashy, and entirely without meaning. Repetition and variation, on the other hand, can often lend depth to the impact of our music and the effectiveness of practicing.
I'm going to take one very simple and very specific melodic idea and illustrate how many different ways we can look at this on the guitar. Two intervals. That's it. Up a diatonic second and then up another 4th. If we're in C and starting on C, that gives us C, D, G, which is an inversion of a Gsus4 triad. (There I go with the suspensions again...)
Here's a shorthand example of how I can practice this idea throughout the key of C and all over the fingerboard. (Click the image to enlarge.)
The first example is showing how the idea can ascend and descend through a C major scale in V position. This should be played ascending to the highest note in a given position, then descending to the lowest note, then back to the root. I use 7 positions for most scales.
The second example shows how to practice this same idea along a set of two strings. Again, the short hand can be extended all the way up and down the fingerboard, from open strings to the highest fret. There are 5 sets of adjacent strings on the guitar. Some patterns won't work on two adjacent strings, but this one does.
The third example shows how the idea can be moved up and down sets of three strings as chords. We've got 4 sets of strings to practice this on in this case.
Does that seem like a lot? It IS, but guess what. There's MORE you can do with this simple three note motive without even getting into rhythm or articulation. Consider that this only addresses a major scale and the associated modes. You can also apply this idea to harmonic minor, melodic minor, and other synthetic scales.
I don't know exactly how to calculate the number of different ways to play that one simple little idea on guitar, but I figure it's well into the hundreds...
Oh, and what if I switch the second and third notes so it goes up to G then down to D? Mind boggling!
Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher
