String Skipping

There are many concepts that aid in our development as instrumentalists and over time we pursue and practise them all. One concept at the top of that long list is playing a melody written for instruments other than the guitar. Doing this forces us to think outside the framework of the guitars fingerboard. In the world of jazz you will find yourself regularly playing music written for both saxophone and voice. 

I found that to successfully connect these types of melodies I had to re-think how I approached the fingerboard and question the very idea of playing in position. A very important step to making seamless connections with minimal position shifts was the use of string skipping. I found that once I truly got to grips with this technique I was able to connect phrases of a melody in a way that traditional position playing would never have allowed. This made melodies sound more natural and connected. With continued investigation of this technique I found that it not only helped improve my sight reading because it involved fewer position shifts but it also started to become part of my improvisational vocabulary.

This next lesson is a handout I use when I work with students to introduce them to the concept of string skipping and also to help with technique issues of pick control and tone. 

Even though this exercise does indeed move horizontally along the fingerboard I have found it to be a wonderful tool to get use to navigating over strings rather than across them. 

Set your metronome at a comfortable tempo at first. I start students off at 100 BPM and gradually increase once the complete exercise can be played with consistent volume and tone.

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