Hey Friend,

It’s easy to take music at face value -- to just listen without really hearing. 

As musicians, part of our job is to recognize how the tapestry of notes and beats are creating a story for the listener and moving them through.

We’re interested in how the various guitar parts work to fill out the body of a song, and we’re going to dig into the next interval pattern today.

Another interval pattern we see a lot of is the third interval, both major and minor. 

We can come up with very interesting double stop riffs to weave into a song.

I case you're not familiar with what a double stop is, it's simply playing two notes together. To put it into context with what we've seen already, a power chord could be considered a double stop.

Double stops started as a technique on bowed instruments like the violin or cello, but it was easily adapted to guitar and bass.

It's probably safe for me to say that we've taken the technique on as our own and developed it well past its inventor's intended use.

Getting back to the third interval, this pattern is extremely useful because it is the basis for simple harmonies, whether with voice or another instrument. So the fact that we can create the harmonized riffs easily makes it incredibly easy for a single guitarist to make his guitar sound a lot fuller.

Of course, the third interval is also important to simple triads (chords). For most of the chords that get used in Rock, we end up fingering notes across two octaves. 

Barre chords are used heavily in Rock and Blues rhythm guitar. Barre chords are rooted on the sixth or fifth strings, and the root note (tonic) is doubled with the octave note on the fourth or third string, respectively.

The third interval then comes into the picture, falling on the third or second string. This is the case for any second inversion triad. 

In case you’ve never heard of inversions, here’s a quick rundown. 

An inversion is just a fancy name for the chord configuration. What I mean is, it’s the way the chord is laid out on the fingerboard.

Since there are three notes in a triad, there are three primary inversions. When you play a chord, the order that the notes get strummed can be laid out on the fingerboard  like this:

When you start moving past playing basic barre chords in your rhythms and start focusing in on the third interval pattern, you're going to find some very interesting sounds, especially when you experiment with additional open string notes.

That’s what we’ll look at in more depth over the next couple emails. 

I’ll flesh out the examples here and give your ears some thirds to get comfortable with, then we’ll play around with some cool riffs. 

Have a great Wednesday!

Peace~

Dave