6-2 · The Anatomy of a Melodic Sequence

A melodic sequence is really just two things: a small pattern and a shift. The pattern is a little melodic fragment, a handful of notes. The shift is the rule for where you start the pattern again. Take the most common sequence, groups of three ascending: the pattern is "play three notes up the scale," and the shift is "move up one scale degree and do it again." One-two-three, two-three-four, three-four-five. That's the whole idea — a pattern, and a rule for moving it.

Because the pattern is really a recipe of scale intervals, you can drop the same sequence into any scale or mode and it just works. The flavor changes, since "three up" in a minor pentatonic is spaced differently than "three up" in a full seven-note mode, but the sequence itself carries over untouched.

All of the examples in this module use A Dorian, played in the shape below, built from the A at the 5th fret of the low E string using the 3NPS pattern:

Groups of three are the workhorse — you hear them in solos constantly. Ascending is the version everyone knows:

Descending works the same way in reverse. You can also mix the directions — play each group descending while shifting up the scale, or ascending while shifting down. Those are harder to visualize, so they're used less often, but they have a cool sound and they're worth practicing. Once threes feel comfortable, try fours and fives; the only thing that changes is how many notes are in each group.

Instead of playing three notes up, you can skip the middle note. I call this playing in thirds, and it's another pattern that gets used a lot:

Skip two scale degrees and you get fourths. The wider the leap, the more angular and surprising the line gets. Every one of these has its own character.

So far we've been changing the pattern, but the shift is a variable too. Nothing says the shift has to move by one scale degree, or that it has to be the same shift every time. You can skip a shift, change direction partway through, or shift from one string to another. The more you mix things up, the more mileage you can get before the line starts to sound predictable.

Because a sequence is just a pattern and a shift, it works with every navigation technique we've learned, but some pairings are more natural than others. Groups of three, four, and five sit well in the in-position pentatonic and mode shapes and in the full 3NPS pattern, and thirds work well in all of those too. Groups of three are especially friendly — they flow through every one of the diagonal constructions. For more complex patterns, with wider leaps and longer phrases, 3NPS tends to simplify both the fingering and the picking, using either the seven-string pattern or the Pairs shifted horizontally along the neck.

Please don't just memorize the sequences I've shown you — that misses the whole point. The principle is a pattern and a shift, so you can invent your own, and you'll end up with more variety than any list could give you.

Exercise 6-1: Pick a scale and a tonal center, set up a drone, and work on one sequence for a couple of minutes. Then change it up: a different pattern, a different group length, a different direction, a different shift. If you work on a few patterns every day and switch between them frequently, your brain will generalize, and picking up new patterns, or inventing them on the fly, gets easier and easier. Once a pattern feels comfortable, add a metronome and make sure you're playing evenly and cleanly. Don't worry about speed; if you speed up before you can play cleanly, you're only reinforcing bad habits.