Hey Friend,
Today’s entire set of exercises is focused on third interval double stops.
These are easy on the ears because the third interval is where we naturally harmonize notes. When you hear someone singing a harmony above the main melody, you’re typically hearing the third interval.
To be clear, these exercises mix major and minor third intervals, and they mirror the harmonic chord progression for whichever key they happen to be in.
The bottom note in each double stop is the root note, which would correspond to the chord name (if we were doing triads here), and the upper note is the third, either major or minor.
For example, in the first exercise you’ve got a G and B double stop.
If you were to add the perfect fifth interval to this double stop, you’d have the G major triad (chord), and since we’re starting there, you can assume we’re in the key of G major.
Following a typical harmonic chord progression, the next triad would be A minor. The fifth fret on the sixth string (E) is A, and the third fret fifth string (A) is C, which line up as an A minor chord.
(If you're like me, you also hear where "Blackbird" by the Beatles came from...)
There’s 5 sets of these, covering each of the string pairs.
Here are the exercise files:
I’ve got two song examples that show double stops in action. The first is " Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison, and the second is “ Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac. Each riff has it tabbed out in a slow, practice tempo and then at full tempo.
Both are simple enough to play, but the full tempo will give you a nice challenge to master.
Because “Brown Eyed Girl” is played up in the second octave of frets on the fingerboard, I tabbed out the riff an octave lower for my acoustic friends.
Once you get the hang of these, try pairing them with an open string, particularly when playing the double stops on the fourth and third strings. Use your open A string to experiment with the sound a bit as you slide your fingers up and down in the patterns. Double stop patterns are one of my favorite things to play because they’re so easy to experiment with. You only need to finger two strings, and when you add an open string or two, some of the sounds can be amazing.
I’m going to tab out more of these to show you. For now, these exercises should keep you busy. Enjoy!
Peace~
Dave
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