A great way to expand on scale knowledge is through the practice of harmonizing the notes of a key signature to create more texture. But, the study of playing harmonies does a lot more than that! Harmonizing also helps a guitarist gain a better understanding for which notes work together and how a melody can offer more dynamics...




In this lesson we’re going to study how to harmonize a scale along with how to apply what we learn across a couple of melodies.

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STEP 1). ORGANIZE THE SCALE
In getting started, let’s learn how to simply play a “D” Major scale along the 2nd Guitar String, from the 3rd fret up to 15th fret.



STEP 2). CREATE A HARMONIZED LINE
Next, let’s harmonize that “D Major” Scale into 3rd intervals. To do that, we’ll bring in another line of notes (still from the key of “D” major), only these new notes will be harmonized along the 1st guitar string.

Pay attention to the note groups as you harmonize the scale into 3rd intervals. You’ll want to commit this series of shapes to memory.



Now that we’ve worked through the scale and we’ve also harmonized the scale into thirds, we can start applying the principle of this concept into a more melodic direction.

In doing that, I want to demonstrate a short melodic line from the key of “D Major” played initially as a single note-line.




SINGLE NOTE MELODY:



Next, let’s take the line that we just played, and expand on it to include a second group of notes as a harmony.

Here’s an example of how this can come together with our example in order to add a lot more texture than we could get from out of a single tone phrase.

HARMONIZED LINE:



I’ve had a lot of luck applying this technique, as well as other chording styles, in my playing and I think that once you try out this idea, you’ll have the same success too.

Remember that this idea of harmonizing can also work nicely when it’s played between instruments as well. So, you could come up with a part on guitar, and then get your saxophone or trumpet player to perform the other harmony.

Plus, there are other intervals that you can harmonize with too… like 4th’s, and 6th’s and even just plain octaves.

There’s a lot of choices and they all sound great. With a little practice harmonized ideas are fairly easy to learn and then begin using when you compose or improvise.




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