This is a great little tip I picked up from The Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrick when I was using his book in college.

We often get stuck on our little scale boxes and yearn to break free.  Take any of your scales and start working them up and down a single string in two octaves.  Do it on every string and in different keys.

Now work on improvising solos on each of those strings, one at a time.  You’ll start to find new patterns that you didn’t know about.  You’ll also run across interesting drone movements by mixing your single string notes with open strings.

This same idea can be done with intervals to improve your double stop playing.  Work from 2nds through 7ths up and down each pair of strings.

Both of these can be a little tedious.  Especially if you’re working through all 12 keys.  I tended to use it as a mental warmup for a few minutes.  I also work on them when I’m stuck during the writing process and need to unstick my brain.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.