Quartal Harmony

PaulRussell 6/30/2008 11:31 AM
Hi Don I have a copy of your Melodic Minor revealed. One of the best books I ever bought! Not only are the licks practical and really playable, you give the ground up 'chunks' of info required for learning. I'm stuck in a real rut with my playing. I'm been playing same ideas for what seems like years! In an effort to get some new sounds into my playing I'm turning for some new harmonic concepts... I like these 4th sounding chords that I hear being thrown around. Despite finishing college in music, I'm real vague about where I can throw in these chords, good guitar fingerings etc. etc. Can you help advise here? Many thanks Paul Russell UK

Don Mock 7/20/2008 9:36 PM
Great question Paul. Some of the best 4th stack type voicings are real easy to play. One good one is: Dm11 - at the 5th fret - D on 5th string 5th fret, G on 4th, 5th fret, C on 3rd, 5th fret, F on 2nd, 6th fret and A on 1st, 5th fret. This simple voicing either a 5-note or 4 note version works in so many situations. I would first recommend finding all the locations this chord can work in a given key like C. Just find all the places where all the tones remain in the key. In C, for example, It can be played at the 5th fret, 7th fret and 12th. If we play it as a 4 note 4th stack on the inside 4 strings then it works in more places............5th, 7th 12th and 14th. If we consider them all to be various Dm chords then we get lots of nice extended and sus sounds. But we can also consider them all to be G7 chords or Cmaj7 or Fmaj7 or Am7 etc. Then experiment with more locations of the voicing even if a note ore two are out of the key. This is just a scratch of the surface of the power of these sounds but maybe this will get you started.-Don Mock