Guitar players use a lot of intervals. And, for good reason, they sound really cool, and they're versatile musically. The only thing is that their application is often clouded by misunderstandings to do with how to practice them along with how to use them easily and effortlessly...

Intervals are applied in highlighting melodic lines, we'll add them around vocal parts and they're especially useful in guitar solos. These areas are specifically what we're going to focus on in this lesson.

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In this lesson, I want to get you to the point of being able to take the two most popular intervals, (3rds and 6ths) and be able to use them anywhere on the neck in any key, be that major or minor...

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THIRDS:
The first interval we're going to study will be 3rds - often referred to as, "Diatonic 3rds" when studied within a key.

In our first example, we'll get organized on playing through 3rds from within the key of "F Major." Our focus will be on lining-up all of the thirds found in the key (horizontally) along the strings going laterally through the key signature so that they create the diatonic harmony for the key signature of "F Major."



Practice Routine:
- Start with with a focus on playing a major scale along one string.
- Next, add the appropriate major or minor 3rd interval (above the scale tone) to form the diatonic 3rd interval for the key.
- Once you understand how the intervals work off of the "F Major" tonic, isolate the "D Minor" interval and repeat the study using that step as your Tonic. This will create the intervals from the "Relative Minor" perspective.



Once you memorize the diatonic intervals, and how they operate, try moving them over to other string sets, other keys, and also try using them to create melodies. Afterward, practice applying them within solos over jam-tracks to play some lead ideas with them.

SIXTHS:
Now that you've developed the use of 3rd intervals within a key, it's going to be easy to take this information and invert the interval to create another note distance called a 6th. In other words, by inverting a 3rd interval, we will be able create a 6th interval from the same notes.

We will keep the same key of "FMajor" and organize how this works using all of the same notes on the neck.

Just as we had made a study of 3rds intervals in the key of "F Major," we're now going to do the exact same thing for 6th intervals. The only difference will be a simple change of transferring the 4th string scale tones over to the first guitar string. This changes the distance of the lower note to the higher note from being that of a "3rd" to now being the distance of a "6th."



Practice Routine:
- Start with with a focus on playing a major scale along one string.
- Next, add the appropriate major or minor 3rd interval (above the scale tone) to form the diatonic 3rd interval for the key.
- Once you understand how the intervals work off of the "F Major" tonic, isolate the "D Minor" interval and repeat the study using that step as your Tonic. This will create the intervals from the "Relative Minor" perspective.



CONCLUSION:
Once you memorize all of these diatonic 6th intervals, and how they operate, try moving them over to; other string sets, other keys, and also try using them to create melodies by building some solos over jam-tracks with some lead ideas.

It is relatively easy to begin applying these 3rd and 6th intervals into your music. They're very intuitive to create music with. And, since they're locked into the key center, they're also very melodic as well. As long as you know how to apply the "fretting layouts" and how they set themselves up within keys, it won't take any time at all to start using them melodically.



If you'd like to Find Out What You Should Learn Next on Guitar - take a look at the courses over on my website at CreativeGuitarStudio.com.

My step-by-step; Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced courses will cover what you need to know, along with how to be able to move forward and become the best player that you can be. I've worked on these courses since 1992 and I feel that all together they're the best guitar program you'll ever find.

The courses will help you learn to identify what's required to get you up to the next level of guitar playing, in a very organized way, that makes sense. I look forward to helping you further at CreativeGuitarStudio.com ...Until next time - take care and we'll catch up again on the next lesson. Bye for now!