So I've been playing around with basic triads, and it turns out, riffs can sound pretty cool when you just stick with major triads throughout the progression. To be more specific, it depends on the inversion and on the strings used.
Particular examples I liked:
- First inversion major triads on the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings. For example, E major as xx645x. And then just build a progression based on the E major scale, with that chord as tonic, but use major triads on every scale degree.
- Second inversion major triads on the 6th, 5th and 4th string. For example, E major as 776xxx.
It actually sounds best with a medium amount of distortion, a nice crunch. No need to go full death metal, but also no need to stay clean. Gives the whole thing a little bit of punk rock vibes. I'm not quite sure what it is I like about these riffs, maybe it is the mixture of simple, but pretty voicings, and the "dissonance" coming from non-diatonicity, I don't know. I do know, all the riffs I've been improvising using this principle were much more boring, or just simply worse, when I used the "proper" diatonic chords instead (minor chords on 2nd, 3rd, 6th scale degree, dim on 7th).
I'm not sure there is a question attached to this, just wanted to share my experiments.
I guess, my next plan would be to use my looper for some of these riffs, and do some improvisation over it, play around a bit with scales and whatnot. Will make sure to share some videos of that.
Anyway, feel free to share your favorite non-diatonic progressions
, I'm curious.
Particular examples I liked:
- First inversion major triads on the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings. For example, E major as xx645x. And then just build a progression based on the E major scale, with that chord as tonic, but use major triads on every scale degree.
- Second inversion major triads on the 6th, 5th and 4th string. For example, E major as 776xxx.
It actually sounds best with a medium amount of distortion, a nice crunch. No need to go full death metal, but also no need to stay clean. Gives the whole thing a little bit of punk rock vibes. I'm not quite sure what it is I like about these riffs, maybe it is the mixture of simple, but pretty voicings, and the "dissonance" coming from non-diatonicity, I don't know. I do know, all the riffs I've been improvising using this principle were much more boring, or just simply worse, when I used the "proper" diatonic chords instead (minor chords on 2nd, 3rd, 6th scale degree, dim on 7th).
I'm not sure there is a question attached to this, just wanted to share my experiments.
I guess, my next plan would be to use my looper for some of these riffs, and do some improvisation over it, play around a bit with scales and whatnot. Will make sure to share some videos of that.Anyway, feel free to share your favorite non-diatonic progressions
, I'm curious.
