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Diminished scale intervals
Diminished Scale Intervals - All Possibilities
The diminished scale has featured heavily in many of these posts. One great reason for working on the diminished scale is that it contains all possible melodic intervals. Not only that but all of the intervals can be repeated in 3-fret jumps along your guitar fretboard, allowing you to practise all the intervals you will ever be required to play.
Intervals And Improvisation
When improvising, variety is an important factor in creating interest. Mixing various intervals from large to small will help inject good musicality into your improvised guitar solos.
Interval patterns that you practise as part of the diminished scale can be transferred to more regular scale sounds. The notes will need adjustment to fit with the scale you are using, but the internal jumps that created the melodic idea within the diminished scale will give you inspiration.
It is easy to cover your entire fretboard when using the diminished scale, so this allows you to practise using large areas of your fretboard. You might find yourself being more restricted with other scales that are not symmetrical and do not repeat at specific intervals.
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Diminished Scale Sequence 10
Another alternate picking workout that will help you to build a stronger picking technique. This lick uses a good chunk of the fretboard and will test your right hand.
As with any diminished scale idea, take parts of this lick and move three frets up, or down your fretboard to extend the idea further.
Diminished Scale Sequence 11
And another alternate picking challenge for you! You could economy pick parts of this lick, although you should be able to alternate pick it too, so use the idea to work on your picking.
The idea uses triplets as the overall pattern uses 4-note groups repeated in specific intervals. Playing groups of 4 notes in rhythmic groups of 4 is uninteresting, so triplets help here. You should experiment with different rhythmic phrasing on any of these types of sequences as you want to transform them into musical statements.
Diminished Scale Major 7ths
This is one of my favourite licks out of all the licks uploaded. The concept is very simple as it uses major 7th intervals moved around the fretboard, although I love this wide intervallic sound.
I am using a pick-and-finger approach when playing this lick. Alternate picking would be an extremely difficult picking challenge, so you might want to try alternate picking as it will really help in left-hand/right-hand coordination.
Using a pick-and-finger approach is not just to make this lick easier to play. I often mix picking with a pick and fingers at is it offers tonal variety.
Free Ear Training Course
As we are talking intervals, it is certainly a good time to mention my free ear training mini-course to easily train your ears and be able to hear all possible musical intervals. Click on the button below to gain access.
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