The Guitar Magazine – September 2019

L

ast time, we talked legato and how

we can tie together notes to give

our scales and lead lines more flow

and depth. In this lesson, we’re

going to look at another concept that

will add something new to our lead guitar

playing: doublestops.

A doublestop, or a dyad as it is more

formally known, is a set of two notes played

simultaneously which, in some contexts,

may imply a chord. Doublestops can be

used for a variety of reasons within blues

music – you can use them to spice up your

rhythm parts or you can use them within

lead passages to add a rhythmic feel (think

Chuck Berry).

First, let’s take a look at what doublestops

we have available to us in the A minor

pentatonic scale.

We can use these doublestops in a variety

of ways. Let’s begin with a look at how we

can use them within the context of a 12-bar

blues rhythm.

If we look back at our initial lesson on the

structure of a 12-bar blues, we can take the

chord principles we encountered and apply

some rhythmic doublestops to really make

things interesting.

Each bar in this example is related to an

A chord. The first four bars in this cycle all

fit over an A chord. The first beat contains

an eighth-note triplet with a 5th-fret note

on the 1 and 3 of this beat; think of a

shuffle feel. The second beat is a slide using

a doublestop before another eighth-note

shuffle feel on the third beat.

The bar ends with a doublestop ringing

out for a whole beat.

The only change will be when you hit

the D chord (bars 5, 6 and 10) and the

E chord (bar 9). The doublestop will take

place on two different frets on the third

and second (G and B) strings. This is

to keep the interval between every note

the same, due to the difference in tuning

on the third and second (G and B) strings.

This rhythm applies across all the

other bars in the 12-bar structure. Using

doublestops in this way will give your

blues patterns more of a ‘riffy’ feel – useful

when you’re the only guitarist in a band.

Enjoy the slide and really dig into it to get

it to pop out. Don’t forget to add plenty of

vibrato onto the final doublestop.

ESSENTIAL BLUES LESSONS

PART EIGHT DOUBLESTOPS

WORDS LEIGH FUGE

In the latest instalment of our

beginner’s guide to the blues, we

incorporate doublestops to add

some classic blues licks to the mix

DOUBLESTOP RHYTHM

THE DOUBLESTOP

ESSENTIAL BLUES LESSONS

GUITAR MAGAZINE 137