Active Melody

Learn to play blues guitar.

Using harmony when improvising lead – An easy way to visualize harmonized 6ths and 3rds – EP504

Description

In this week’s guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to integrate harmonies into your lead and connect them all back to basic chord shapes so that they’re easy to visualize.

Part 1 - Free Guitar Lesson

Part 2 - For Premium Members

Only available to premium members.
Register for premium access

Slow Walkthrough

Only available to premium members.
Register for premium access

Video Tablature Breakdown

Only available to premium members.
Register for premium access
Curious about the benefits of
Premium Membership?
Try it for FREE!
arrow_downYou need to be logged in as a premium member to access the tab, MP3 jam tracks, and other assets. Learn More

Add to "My Favorites"

You need to login or register to bookmark/favorite this content.

Comments

  5. Charles S says

    I know you’ve taught this concept before, but I like how you cut it down to the bones so we can’t help but see it and you come back to the basics and not just run away from most of us. We can expand on this! Great!!

  18. Daniel H says

    EP363 & EP423 were break throughs for me when I started following AM on a consistent basis. Brian, it is awesome when you revisit fundamental concepts like harmonized 3rds and 6ths. The repetition really helps me to own the material!… I suspect I am not alone with this feeling.

  22. Rollover33 says

    Hello, I often think of this solution of 6ths and 3rds… but it just falls under my fingers once in three!! This is a great opportunity to work on this once and for all ! And the composition is really superb… the kind to grab his guitar from the first bars… nice work, Brian !!!
    … while continuing the gypsy course of two weeks ago, it’s almost in your pocket… remains the speed !

  29. Chris G says

    Great lesson Brian, amazing how it’s possible to make music with some basic knowledge, which is good for me, because that’s all I have. stuff like this is encouragement to continue the journey while having some fun.

  40. Mike P says

    Another fantastic lesson! A beautiful little tune with a really concise explanation of the harmonised 6th’s and 3rds concept and using them to connect between the A shape and E shape barre chords is a valuable take-away for me. More yodelling please Brian!

  47. John C says

    Another brilliant lesson, Brian. After 40-odd years of playing classical guitar, with just a bit of basic acoustic playing, for me your approach to learning how to improvise has opened up a whole new world of guitar. One small suggestion I would have is that the notation could show where the rhythm as played is not actually pairs of quavers (as printed) but a dotted quaver + a semiquaver. This de-dum-de-dum rhythm occurs with the pair of quavers on the fourth beat of Bar 1 and again on the fourth beat of Bar 2, with lots of similar instances in the rest of the piece. I might well be in a tiny minority with this observation, but it would certainly help me to visualise the rhythmic shape of the piece without the need to go back to the audio quite so much.

  48. John W says

    Hi Brian,

    This was a great and liberating lesson for me. Some review perhaps for many, but it clicked for me and my playing suddenly makes sense. Was even able to compose a short piece using a game a friend taught me , where you throw a dice five or six times to create a kind of random cord progression, then clean it up a bit, choose a key, then play the chords and begin to add pull-offs, hammer-ons etc and notes between. Thanks to this lesson was able to make that work and make a little composition. It was not sophisticated, or even all that interesting, but following the instructions here for 3rds and 6ths was able to link the cords and make music…. For the first time on my own. Not a lightbulb, a floodlight ! Thank you.

  49. Dominique B says

    Hi Brian!

    Just to let you know that bar 4 is missing in the video breakdown.

    Also I cruelly miss the explanations you used to give in the micro lessons in the past.I

    Now you play the part and then we have to dive in and try to swim by ourselves, which I find very frustrating. I mentioned that when you first stopped breaking down these micro lessons, but my remark was unnoticed. I do hope you will take it into account, as I am convinced that I am not the only one who gets frustrated.

    I am still hanging in there though.Thank you for every thing you are doing for us !!! DOM

  50. C Frank O says

    Hi Brian, It is a nice triad chord sequence, but after learning this chord progression, one then has to know how to use these triad harmonies in any song. I would like to see them used in a popular song because that is why I am trying to improve my guitar playing. Or how would you accompany another player using these triad harmonies? Frank

  53. Andrew M says

    Brian I have thought about this for a number of days and some thing escapes me. In playing the 6th harmony on strings 4 and 2 and starting with the c shape on fret 1 and 2,
    2.1 is a c note and 4.2 is an E note and C is 6 intervals away from E. The tune is in C therefore E is the 3rd of C Major C is the root of C Major. The note on the G string if we played it would be the 5th of the scale. I have worked out a diagram of the fret board all up the neck playing the sixth harmony of every C Major Scale note on the 4th string (D).
    When we move across to string 3 and 1 this relationship isn’t there for the C shape so the question is which note is the Root note especially when playing harmony on string 3 and 1 ?

Leave a Reply

Recent Lessons

Contact

For all support questions email: support@activemelody.com
For all other inquires email: brian@activemelody.com