Guitar Tip #6 - Mechanical Inversions (or how to discover cool new chords)
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
Knowing a position of the major scale is great but knowing it inside out is when it really becomes useful.
Instead of just running the sequence up and down, play a note, skip a note and play a note to get the scale in thirds.
Going further with that pattern (play a note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note) gives you major, minor and half diminished triad arpeggios across different string sets. Adding another skip a note, play a note means you’ve played the major scale as fully harmonised 7th chords which gives you fingerings for major 7, minor 7 dominant 7 and half diminished 7th chords.
This immediately improves your knowledge of major scale harmony by helping you hear which degrees of the scale should be major or minor, which of these majors and minors have 7th or flat 7th degrees, how to construct a half diminished chord and how that differs from a minor 7th chord and it improves fretboard literacy by showing you what these intervals can look like across different string sets and single strings.
Practice Tip: Only move on from the previous pattern when it feels comfortable, for example, if the thirds pattern is still taking time to visualise, don’t attempt the triads until you can play the major scale in thirds in a variety of keys.
Advanced Practice: Play the major scale as 7th chord arpeggios backwards, from the top to the bottom. If that’s too easy, play them from somewhere in the middle of the scale and work up and back down again.
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