Hey Friend,

A few weeks ago I talked to you about double stops. If you recall, a double stop is where you play two scale intervals together in a chord. It's kind of like a power chord, using two notes, but you aren't restricted to just the one and five notes from the scale. You can use any scale note up to and including the octave (and beyond). 

(Want to learn everything you need to know about power chords? Get Easy Power Chords right here. Over 250 tabbed chord charts for every key, at your fingertips.)

Here's a fun little exercise you can do to get a really good feel for double stops:

Pick a string... any string... You're going to use this string as a bass note, one you can repeat as the root of your double stop.

On the next string up in pitch, place your index finger on the identical note as the root string. For example, if you are using the fourth string (D) as your root, place your index finger on the third string, seventh fret.

These are both D notes.

Here's the game. You're going to slide your index finger up and down the third string to find the scale notes for the D major scale. Don't worry if haven't memorized the notes on the fingerboard - your ears are going to guide you. Otherwise, you'll know when the notes don't sound right together.

Work up and down the third string to find the notes. Then, look at the exercise files and play along. Each system isn't designed to be complete - they're just there to stimulate your thinking and hopefully prompt some ideas.

You can treat each four bar section as it's own piece, or you can take what I've done and just expand on it. Whatever you want to do...

Once you know where the notes are (which frets to land on), you can come up with all sorts of cool sounding runs. Let your creative juices flow and see what you come up with. Don't be afraid to make some big jumps between frets and listen for anything that sounds remotely interesting. 

It's Sunday - have some fun for a change!

Peace~

Dave