Sliding Around with Tritones
When you are playing over a I-IV-V progression (blues or blues based stuff) - particularly if you're relying heavily on dominant 7 voicings - a super user shape to have under your fingers is the tritone.
You can call this the ♭5 or the ♯4 (depending on your viewpoint), but however you want to look at it - by itself if you play the two notes together - they are pretty dissonant. But if you play them over the right backing harmony (chords) or even just a bass note - suddenly they make a lot of sense and sound really cool!
I think the thing I like best about the tritone, and this particular shape, is that in order to convert the tritone for the I chord to the tritone for IV chord to the tritone for the V chord you only have to move 1 fret up or back!
So in today's example you can see how it works over a straight ahead I-IV-V progression.
If you mix and match these licks, and add hammer ons, pull offs, bends or taps - you can get a lot of really cool sounds and a lot of mileage just out of 3 simple notes really.
You can take any of these shapes and also apply it to any static (non-moving) vamps over the corresponding chord. (and of course to any other key as well)
As always downloadable PDF and guitar pro file for this lick of the week is available to Fretboard Infinity Loop members. Not sure how to become a member? Send me a quick email to nick @ guitardojo.ca
You can call this the ♭5 or the ♯4 (depending on your viewpoint), but however you want to look at it - by itself if you play the two notes together - they are pretty dissonant. But if you play them over the right backing harmony (chords) or even just a bass note - suddenly they make a lot of sense and sound really cool!
I think the thing I like best about the tritone, and this particular shape, is that in order to convert the tritone for the I chord to the tritone for IV chord to the tritone for the V chord you only have to move 1 fret up or back!
So in today's example you can see how it works over a straight ahead I-IV-V progression.
If you mix and match these licks, and add hammer ons, pull offs, bends or taps - you can get a lot of really cool sounds and a lot of mileage just out of 3 simple notes really.
You can take any of these shapes and also apply it to any static (non-moving) vamps over the corresponding chord. (and of course to any other key as well)
As always downloadable PDF and guitar pro file for this lick of the week is available to Fretboard Infinity Loop members. Not sure how to become a member? Send me a quick email to nick @ guitardojo.ca