the harmony line. In fact, some songs were
written with staggered harmony parts. For
instance, the intro to Iron Maiden’s “The
Trooper” has a built-in layered entrance of a
harmonized line and can be pulled off by a
single guitarist using a delay pedal.
If you’re new to harmonizing, here’s
a quick overview on creating harmony
parts. Typically, the intervals of a har-
mony part are fixed (i.e., the part uses the
same interval, shifting between its major
or minor form to accommodate diatonic
notes) throughout the duration of the line,
with thirds and sixths being the most com-
mon choices (although fourths, fifths, and
octaves are also frequently employed). Of
course, there are exceptions to every rule,
and different intervals can be used through-
out a line. For a more in-depth exploration
of harmonized lines, consult a book such
as A Player’s Guide to Chords and Harmony:
Music Theory for Real-World Musicians by
Jim Aikin or David Baker’s Arranging and
Composing for the Small Ensemble: Jazz,
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Independent/Counterpoint
Melodies
If you’re really adventurous, you can take
the staggered harmonized line idea we
just discussed and use it to play something contrapuntal, like a “canon” or a
“round.” In other words, soon after a
melody starts, it is imitated by another
voice. In this case, the other voice would
be from your delay. To get this technique
under your belt, you might try playing
simple, familiar pieces like “Row, Row,
Row Your Boat” or “Frère Jacques”—
which might be harder to play, initially,
than you would think. If you’re more
ambitious, try tackling something like
“Little Dance in Canon Form” from
composer Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos or
parts of a Bach Invention.
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Looping
Guitar legends such as Bill Frisell and
David Torn have made looping an integral part of their live shows. At its most
extreme, looping is almost like real-time
multitracking: You can continually add
layers of sound, starting with a bass figure, then a layer of chords, followed by
a muted, single-note rhythm part, and
then a solo on top. Pedals like the Line 6
DL4 Delay Modeler (street $236), Boss
DD- 7, and Eventide TimeFactor (street
$399) have built-in looping functionality and are good options for getting
started with looping.
One tricky thing with looping is that
the start and end points of the loop have
to be rhythmically precise: When you
first record the loop, you have to start
the loop on the first beat of the phrase,
and then stop the loop when the first
beat occurs again—thus cutting off the
note’s sustain to avoid overlap. In every
loop, the last note will immediately
flow into the repetition of the first note.
