“The downstrokes and palm muting give the riff a very specific sound and feel that’s almost marimba-like”: Cory Wong on how you can use double-stops in a melody or solo

Cory Wong: Using double-stops in a melody or solo - YouTube

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In this lesson, I’d like to talk about how to solo and create harmonized melody lines utilizing dyads, which many guitarists refer to as “double-stops.”

Although, technically, the term double-stop means two strings held down with a single finger, it is widely used to refer to any two notes sounded together. The most commonly used dyads/double-stops on the guitar are pairs of notes that are a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, or octave apart.

A great example of how I use double-stops can be heard on the new Fearless Flyers song, Anaheim.

If you’re familiar with my music, you know that a big part of my sound is harmonizing pentatonic scales. For example, as demonstrated in Figure 1, I’m playing the D major pentatonic scale (D, E, F#, A, B) starting on the 6th, B, sounded at the 7th fret on my low E string.

The notes of this scale are harmonized by simultaneously sounding a 4th or a 3rd above each scale tone on the next higher string; these higher notes also follow the structure of D major pentatonic, meaning they stay within the confines of the scale.

A big part of how I attain the desired sound is to strum all of the two-note pairs with downstrokes and palm muting. Figure 2 illustrates another riff performed this way. The downstrokes and palm muting give the riff a very specific sound and feel that’s almost marimba-like, or like pizzicato strings.

When I play a lot of dyad-based melodies, I’ll switch back and forth between muting and allowing the strings to ring freely. As shown in Figure 3, I begin by allowing the strings to ring then briefly switch to palm muting before releasing the palm mute to add finger vibrato to the held notes.

Figure 4 is also built from harmonized note pairs based primarily on D major pentatonic. Here, I begin with pizzicato palm-muted figures then switch to double-stops that I allow to ring.

You may ask, “How do I know what note pairs to play?” In these examples, at times I’m sticking with D major pentatonic, but I will also sometimes broaden the harmony to D major hexatonic (D, E, F#, G, D, B) or even the D major scale (D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#). Most often, I simply follow my ears in choosing what to play, so the end result isn’t always formulaic.

A great way to practice this double-stop harmonizing technique is to move up and down the fretboard playing pairs of adjacent string sets in harmonized 3rds.

As demonstrated in Figure 5, I move up the top two strings playing 3rds, as they occur within the D major scale. Also practice doing this on all other pairs of adjacent strings, such as the G and B strings, as shown in Figure 6.

In Figure 7, I play D major pentatonic double-stops in different areas of the fretboard, moving freely between the different pairs of adjacent strings.

Doing this is a great way to memorize these shapes, so that you’ll be able to easily incorporate this approach and technique into your solo lines and harmonized melodic ideas.