The Emotional Value of Intervals in Music: A Guide for Guitarists

When we talk about the emotional impact of music, we're often referring to the feelings that different intervals can evoke. An interval, which is the distance between two notes, can significantly influence the mood of a piece of music. Understanding the emotional value of intervals is crucial for creating melodies that resonate with listeners. In this blog post, we'll explore resolved and unresolved intervals and how you can use them to enhance your melodic creations on the guitar.

Understanding Intervals

Before diving into their emotional significance, let's briefly define some common intervals:

1. Unison (Perfect 1st): Same note, no distance.

2. Minor 2nd: One half-step apart.

3. Major 2nd: Two half-steps apart.

4. Minor 3rd: Three half-steps apart.

5. Major 3rd: Four half-steps apart.

6. Perfect 4th: Five half-steps apart.

7. Tritone (Augmented 4th / Diminished 5th): Six half-steps apart.

8. Perfect 5th: Seven half-steps apart.

9. Minor 6th: Eight half-steps apart.

10. Major 6th: Nine half-steps apart.

11. Minor 7th: Ten half-steps apart.

12. Major 7th: Eleven half-steps apart.

13. Octave (Perfect 8th): Twelve half-steps apart.

Resolved vs. Unresolved Intervals

Resolved intervals create a sense of stability and completion. These intervals sound pleasing and tend to give a feeling of rest or resolution. Common resolved intervals include the perfect unison, perfect 5th, and octave.

Unresolved intervals, on the other hand, create tension and a sense of anticipation. They often sound dissonant and make the listener expect a resolution. Examples of unresolved intervals include the minor 2nd, tritone, and major 7th.

Emotional Value of Intervals

1. Minor 2nd: This interval is very dissonant and creates a sense of tension or unease. It’s often used to evoke feelings of suspense or discomfort. Think of the iconic theme from "Jaws" — those two notes a half-step apart instantly create a sense of impending danger.

2. Major 2nd: Slightly less tense than the minor 2nd, the major 2nd still has an unresolved quality. It's often used to add a sense of movement or instability.

3. Minor 3rd: This interval has a sad, melancholic feel. It’s a staple in minor chords and melodies, contributing to their overall emotional weight.

4. Major 3rd: The major 3rd is bright and happy. It’s essential in major chords and contributes to their uplifting sound.

5. Perfect 4th: This interval is somewhat neutral but can lean towards feeling unresolved, especially in melodic contexts. It has a strong, open sound.

6. Tritone: Highly dissonant and unstable, the tritone is often used to create tension that demands resolution. It’s famously referred to as the "devil’s interval" due to its unsettling sound.

7. Perfect 5th: This interval is very stable and consonant. It’s fundamental in creating a sense of resolution and completeness.

8. Minor 7th: Adds a sense of longing or unresolved tension. It's commonly found in dominant 7th chords, which resolve nicely to the tonic.

9. Major 7th: Very dissonant and unresolved, this interval has a distinctive tension that feels like it’s reaching out for resolution.

10. Octave: Pure and consonant, the octave is the ultimate resolution. It creates a sense of finality and completeness.

Practical Examples for Guitarists

To understand how these intervals play out on the guitar, let’s look at some simple examples.

Example 1: Creating Tension with the Tritone

Play the open A string (5th string) and then play the 6th fret of the D string (4th string). This creates a tritone interval. Notice how tense and dissonant it sounds. Now resolve this interval by moving to the 7th fret of the D string, creating a perfect 5th with the open A string. Feel how the tension resolves into a stable sound.

Example 2: Using the Major 3rd for a Happy Melody

Start with the open G string (3rd string) and play the 4th fret of the G string. This creates a major 3rd interval. The sound is bright and uplifting. Use this interval to craft a cheerful melody by moving around the G major scale, emphasizing the major 3rd intervals.

Example 3: Conveying Sadness with the Minor 3rd

Play the open B string (2nd string) and the 3rd fret of the B string. This minor 3rd interval has a melancholic feel. Use it within the context of a minor chord progression to evoke sadness or introspection.

Conclusion

Understanding the emotional value of intervals can transform your approach to melody creation. By consciously using resolved and unresolved intervals, you can craft melodies that deeply resonate with your audience. As guitarists, experimenting with these intervals on the fretboard can lead to new and exciting musical discoveries. So grab your guitar and explore the vast emotional landscape that intervals offer. Happy playing!

What scales should I learn to improve my soloing?

If you’re here because you want to take your guitar solos to the next level, I am about to break your world because “What scales should I learn to be better at guitar solos?” is the wrong type of question. While scales are important, the true key to better soloing lies somewhere else entirely. In today’s article you’ll learn why that is, and how to reset your assumptions (and your playing) as IMHO scales are not the solution to better guitar solos.

Volume doesn’t necessarily dictate importance

If you assessed the importance of a guitar topic based on the amount of resources available for it, then learning scales would likely come at the top. A quick Google of “Learning scales on guitar” returns about 17 Million results! The amount of TAB, videos, exercises, books, and courses dedicated to learning guitar scales is HUGE. And this alone would suggest its significance in improving soloing – but it’s not.

Why learning scales to improve soloing is a scam

Don’t get me wrong, scales have their place in learning guitar. Their purpose is to present your ear with a sound, your fingers with strength and dexterity and your brain with an understanding of key. And scales play several other very important roles but their role in specifically improving your soloing is massively overstated.

To paraphrase bass player Victor Wooten, the emphasis on learning scales for better soloing is simply designed to sell more stuff: videos, courses, books etc. It doesn’t actually help you with one very important part: creating the solo.

Ask yourself this: “Do I really believe that after learning more scales in all their patterns and positions, a great guitar solo is just going to fall out from under my fingers?”

Truthfully, you know the answer. You’ve almost definitely tried learning at least one scale – probably the minor pentatonic – only to find that the creativity and musicality needed to create a beautiful and melodic solo is not embedded in learning the scale itself.

Learning scales to improve your lead guitar is no more effective than reciting the alphabet in an attempt to improve your vocabulary.

“Do I really believe that after learning more scales a great guitar solo is just going to fall out from under my fingers?”

By now, you know that scales ≠ solos

A great lead guitar solo:

• is a response to a musical landscape

• requires a narrative

• involves timing, phrasing and expression

Learning scales doesn’t help you develop any of these.

Did you ever examine why you think scales are the pathway to improving your guitar solos?

When I asked myself this question, the answer was no. I had never dug into the root of this belief. But when I asked myself why I thought scales were the method to create great solos, the answer for me (and probably for you) was “because everyone said so!” And the sheer volume of previously mentioned resources seemed to further validate this way of thinking.

I never questioned this and you probably haven’t either. I never asked how learning scales would help me make that leap into playing awesome solos. I just assumed that advice from people playing longer than me was good advice. It wasn’t.

Those who took the scales pathway got stuck at a dead end

Almost all my students come to me with this issue. I teach mainly 30-55 year old men who have been playing more years than they care to admit but still haven’t managed to unlock the way to create melodic solos. They describe:

• Not knowing what to play over certain chord progressions

• Being stuck using pentatonic boxes and finding it hard to sound interesting with the same 5 notes

• Being “unsure” of how and when to use notes outside these box shapes

• Their solos sounding robotic and scalar when they play

• Frustration as they see other guitar players soloing in a more sophisticated way

• Feeling like they are at a dead end and stuck for ideas to move forward

If this sounds like you then you are not alone. In my experience this affects every self-taught player, and is the biggest hurdle you have faced since the F barre chord.

What should I focus on to improve my guitar solos?

The steps I recommend can generally be described as:

1. Unlearn

2. Understand

3. Create

4. Develop

Or “Double-U, C,D” as I like to call it.

“Empty your cup so it may be filled.”

— Bruce Lee

Unlearn the thinking and techniques holding you back

Like driving through a narrow country lane and meeting an oncoming vehicle. The only thing to do is reverse the whole way back up the track.

Unlearning starts with ceasing activities that reinforce your current scalar approach. Embark on a Scales Detox and ban yourself from playing or practicing scales, even as a warmup (but singing them is okay – recommended in fact – see Ear Training below).

Additionally, avoid the classic “noodling over a backing track”, as it is particularly damaging to your progress. Instead replace this with chromatic exercises and ear training.

You’ll find this is the most challenging step as you have to unthink and undo many years of scale drill conditioning and muscle memory.

Understand the musical landscape for your solo

Earlier I talked about a guitar solo being a response to a musical landscape. The secret to levelling up your lead playing is actually very simple: know and understand this musical landscape and the note choices available to you.

Right now you might be panicking because of the amount of work you feel that might be, but I am here to reassure you: it’s so straightforward a 9 year old can do it, and you’ll kick yourself for not getting it sooner.

Play the game of matching

Did you ever play Snap, the card game? It’s a simple game of matching. If you lay down the eight of clubs on top of the eight of diamonds, the first one to shout “Snap!” wins those cards, because they match. Understanding your musical landscape is as simple as this.

Why?

Because your musical landscape (chord progression) is provided to you. And your task (primarily) is to match the notes you play in your solo with the notes contained within the chord playing at that moment in the progression.

It’s. That. Simple.

No more questions like “What scale can I play over all these chords?”, cos that’s scalar thinking and you’re done with that. The question truly is: “What notes do the chords provide me with to build a solo from?”

But what about note names? I don’t know mine that well

A common response I encounter is “Well, I can’t do this until I know the note names on all strings.” False. Even without knowing note names you can build great solos simply by harnessing your knowledge chord shapes.

Understand the emotional value of intervals to build your solo

Understanding the emotional value of intervals, their relationship to the chord and the simplest way to categorise gives you the means to start to creating better solos.

Example:

A minor chord contains 3 intervals (1, b3, 5) but the one that gives a minor chord its minor colour is the flat 3 (b3). So starting your solo on the flat 3 will emphasise the “minor-ness”.

Additionally, intervals can be generally categorised as “resolved” or “unresolved”. The former being a kind of musical full stop while the latter is more like a comma. So ending your phrase on a unresolved interval suggests to the listener that there is more to come.

Embrace the two buckets method

Once you have levelled up your chord shapes knowledge and understand the intervals within them, you can simplify solos by embracing this thought: there’s only two buckets.

1. Notes contained in the chord playing at this moment

2. All the others

Continuously create solos to understand what works (and what doesn’t) and why

Practical application is where you’ll really turn learned information into knowledge. Knowing how, why and when you can apply things you’ve learnt is essential for a deeper understanding and recognition of the correct context.

At first it’s best to pre-plan and map out your solos rather than to improvise. Cut yourself some slack and focus on one thing at a time. Recording them is useful for you to analyse your progress and to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Remember: nobody has to hear these solos. They (and you) are a work in progress and are a means to an end. Incorporate solo creation work in your daily practice and you’ll fins yourself making more musical choices.

Develop and iterate phrases from a master phrase

If you listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Texas Flood solo, you should notice that it doesn’t move around the fretboard that much. In fact the solo can be thought of as a series of “chapters” or paragraphs, where SRV stays in one place for a while and develops phrases from a similar phrase he played previously.

Instead of randomly moving all over the fretboard, think of your licks as a series of sentences that build into a paragraph. These sentences are all related and expand upon and enrich the first phrase.

One you’re done with the first paragraph, move on to a new area of the fretboard and continue the

How long will it take before I see results?

As a guitar teacher who has spend the last 20 years helping those stuck at the dead end, I’ve found it takes 7 key steps for students to achieve real results in improving their soloing. Working with students from my 10x Your Improv course, the timeline for confident success varies from 7-12 months.

“Holy Crap!” I hear you say, “I don’t want to be waiting that long.”

Well, to hit you with a truth bomb: it’s taken years for you to get into this mess, so its going to take around year to dig yourself out.

What are your Questions about Improvisation?

I get a lot of emails asking about improvising: how to start, how to come up with ideas, how to not sound like you are playing scales. Are you stuck creating solos or frustrated that they always sound the same? I can help – what are your top 2 questions?