The Sixth Interval

Greetings everybody, Josh Cho here back with a lesson I'm calling the Sixth Interval.

This issue's lesson is all about the Interval of the Sixth, or more simply, the sixth.

This technique of playing intervals on the steel is an effective way to make your melody lines fatter, while implying all kinds of chords that mesh with the backing tracks...or your backup band.

We'll be getting more into intervals and what they mean in later editions. But for now, on our way to learning a cool lick using sixths, we'll be going over a major scale pattern that will come up in later lessons, and delve a bit into some music theory.

There's even a custom Sixth Interval video to this lesson that shows how to move the lick we're learning around the neck to different keys.

So let's get right into it, and remember we're using the C6 tuning for six string guitars lowest to highest CEGACE. If you have an 8-stringer, simply focus your attention on the string set that contains the CEGACE tuning.

Example 1

Before I can even explain what a Sixth Interval is, we have to play a major scale.

Example 1 is the music and TAB to the G major scale. Mind you, there are lots of ways to play this scale, you may have learned a different pattern--this is my pattern and quite frankly this one's just better! But you can be the judge. (If you have a better major scale pattern, please feel free to mention, explain or upload you jpg TAB to it using the comment fields at the bottom of this lesson-thanks in advance, I love receiving feedback!- JC)

As you can see in the TAB, we're starting out on the seventh fret G note on the 6th string and then making our way up the scale using primarily the 5th and 7th fret until reaching the F# on the 6th fret of the 2nd string.

Use this scale as a great way to practice your bar movement and finger picking, but remember to go in reverse order--in other words, go Up and Down the scale.

Now if you count the number of notes in the scale from Low G to High G, you'll count 8 notes, and that's where the term Octave comes from--the eighth notes of the scale is basically the same as the first just higher--an octave higher to be exact!

What we're doing today is counting up the scale until we get to the SIXTH note, which in this case is E, and then playing the low G with the E together at the same time--this is Sixth Interval, and it has a pleasing harmonious sound that's used extensively in steel guitar music.

Example 2

In Example 2 here, we're going to pluck the low G and the higher E together on the seventh fret, and this is the Sixth that this lesson is all about.

Now the amazing part of all of this is that you don't have to just start at the beginning of the scale. You can start on any other note of the G scale, count up six notes and play those to notes together and this will also be a Sixth. If you don't know all your keys and scales yet, not to worry, we'll be covering more in future lessons.

Looking back at the Example 2 music and TAB, in the second measure I started from the note B on the seventh fret of the 5th string and counted up six notes, which gave me a G on the 7th fret of the second string.

Now these two examples conveniently sit on the same fret, but as we'll see in the following example, which is the closing phrase in my St. Louis Blues DVD lesson, some of the Sixths involve a split slant that should give you something to practice.

Example 3

The lick in Example 3 utilizes the Sixth interval exclusively on the 5th and 2nd string.

Starting out at the 5th fret, just walk the Sixth down to the second fret. These are all pretty easy because they're on the same fret the entire way down to the second fret.

Now when you get into the second measure, you'll use the slant version of the sixth using the third fret of the 5th string and the fourth fret of the 2nd string. You'll move that slant up two frets to the fifth and sixth frets, and then finally come to rest on the Sixth from Example 2 on the seventh fret.

To hear what this lick sounds like and get a feel for the blues/shuffle rhythm that's used to play it, check out the video found here.

Conclusion

So until next time, keep on lap steelin' and I'll be in touch soon with another info-taining issue of the STEEL MOJO NEWS.

-Josh

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