
We will be thinking of dominant chords as they relate to a diatonic major scale. All our examples will be based in the key of G major (G–A–B–C–D–E–F#), but first let’s learn how to make a dominant 7 chord from scratch.
The formula, or numerical representation of a dominant chord, is 1–3–5–b7. Simply, take every other note (starting on the root) and then lower the 7 by a half-step. If we base this formula over our G major scale, only one dominant 7 chord appears naturally: D7 (D–F#–A–C). It also implies the D Mixolydian scale (D–E–F#–G–A–B–C), which is the fifth mode of the G major scale.
Ex. 1 starts off with a single-note line played at a moderately fast tempo. Right off the bat, I outline a D9 sound by adding in the E. Slide down with the index finger on the 3rd string from the 7th to 5th fret to achieve the proper fingering. You will also use your index finger on the 4th string for the slide down from the 5th to 4th fret. I recommend playing a D7 chord before and after each lick to help connect your ear with the sound of the line.
Incorporating double-stops and fragmented parts of a D7 chord are central to Ex. 2. Notice how the passing notes of B, G, and E quickly shift the ear to an Em triad (E–G–B). Passing notes add a nice element to your phrases just by using different note and intervallic choices found naturally in the Mixolydian mode.
In Ex. 3 I outline several descending triads in a phrase that reminds me of how bebop musicians would approach outlining a dominant chord. I start with a Bm7 arpeggio (B–D–F#–A) before sliding down into an Am7 arpeggio (A–C–E–G). (Another great idea is to take just the first two beats of this example and work in out in different keys all over the neck.) I then jump down an octave and hit a Bm arpeggio (B–D–F#). I end with a little open-string pull-off before sliding into a D7 chord.
Ex. 4 is a great open-string lick played in only two positions but has so much going on with it. I like the back end of the lick where the rub of those major and minor seconds clash together. I picked most of the notes and let them ring as long as possible. Using a bit of delay at 250ms helps the notes sustain more and “bleeds” the notes together, but each note needs a separate attack.
Ex. 5 is another great open-string sequence. The fingering can be really tricky here, so start with your index finger on the 2nd string and your pinky hitting the F# on the 3rd string. After the pull-off, use your pinky for the A on the 2nd string. After that, the rest of the lick lays out nicely. With any type of flowing, open-string idea make sure to hold the notes as long as possible.
Since we are approaching these licks from a country angle, it was only a matter of time before we got our hands around a pedal-steel lick. Ex. 6 is one way to navigate a D7 sound—but it’s a real finger twister. The key here is to make your bends surgical and really nail the pitch. Take it slow and try to match the recording.
Ex. 7 is a triple-stop chordal idea with some rhythmic syncopation. If we break down the chord shapes, you can see that they are familiar patterns. I start with an A minor triad and slide into a B minor triad before hitting two G triads—all in the first beat! Knowing how the diatonic harmony works in terms of triads is invaluable for phrases like this.
Players like Brad Paisley and Brent Mason are absolute masters of using open-string pull-offs to navigate all over the neck. Ex. 8 is my take on something they might play. Make sure to nail the “cluck” right before the bend as it adds an element of chicken pickin’ to the lick. Grab that bend with your ring and pinky for more strength and control.
As you can see there are lots of ways to be creative with just seven notes. Take even just a tiny piece of these phrases and see if you can work them into your own playing. Until next time!
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- How to Use the Mixolydian Scale - Premier Guitar ›
Lollar Pickups introduces the Deluxe Foil humbucker, a medium-output pickup with a bright, punchy tone and wide frequency range. Featuring a unique retro design and 4-conductor lead wires for versatile wiring options, the Deluxe Foil is a drop-in replacement for Wide Range Humbuckers.
Based on Lollar’s popular single-coil Gold Foil design, the new Deluxe Foil has the same footprint as Lollar’s Regal humbucker - as well as the Fender Wide Range Humbucker – and it’s a drop-in replacement for any guitar routed for Wide Range Humbuckers such as the Telecaster Deluxe/Custom, ’72-style Tele Thinline and Starcaster.
Lollar’s Deluxe Foil is a medium-output humbucker that delivers a bright and punchy tone, with a glassy top end, plenty of shimmer, rich harmonic content, and expressive dynamic touch-sensitivity. Its larger dual-coil design allows the Deluxe Foil to capture a wider frequency range than many other pickup types, giving the pickup a full yet well-balanced voice with plenty of clarity and articulation.
The pickup comes with 4-conductor lead wires, so you can utilize split-coil wiring in addition to humbucker configuration. Its split-coil sound is a true representation of Lollar’s single-coil Gold Foil, giving players a huge variety of inspiring and musical sounds.
The Deluxe Foil’s great tone is mirrored by its evocative retro look: the cover design is based around mirror images of the “L” in the Lollar logo. Since the gold foil pickup design doesn’t require visible polepieces, Lollartook advantage of the opportunity to create a humbucker that looks as memorable as it sounds.
Deluxe Foil humbucker features include:
- 4-conductor lead wire for maximum flexibility in wiring/switching
- Medium output suited to a vast range of music styles
- Average DC resistance: Bridge 11.9k, Neck 10.5k
- Recommended Potentiometers: 500k
- Recommended Capacitor: 0.022μF
The Lollar Deluxe Foil is available for bridge and neck positions, in nickel, chrome, or gold cover finishes. Pricing is $225 per pickup ($235 for gold cover option).
For more information visit lollarguitars.com.
A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.
Supro Montauk 15-watt 1 x 10-inch Tube Combo Amplifier - Blue Rhino Hide Tolex with Silver Grille
Montauk 110 ReverbThe two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.
Zilla offers a variety of customization to the customers. On the dedicated Website, customers can choose material, color/tolex, size, and much more.
The sensation and joy of playing a guitar cabinet
Sometimes, when there’s no PA, there’s just a drumkit and a bass amp. When the creative juices flow and the riffs have to bounce back off the wall - that’s the moment when you long for a powerful guitar cabinet.
A guitar cabinet that provides „that“ well-known feel and gives you that kick-in-the-back experience. Because guitar cabinets can move some serious air. But these days cabinets also have to be comprehensive and modern in terms of being capable of delivering the dynamic and tonal nuances of the KEMPER PROFILER. So here it is: The ZILLA 2 x 12“ upright slant KONE cabinet.
These cabinets are designed in cooperation with the KEMPER sound designers and the great people from Zilla. Beauty is created out of decades of experience in building the finest guitar cabinets for the biggest guitar masters in the UK and the world over, combined with the digital guitar tone wizardry from the KEMPER labs. Loaded with the exquisit Kemper Kone speakers.
Now Kemper and Zilla bring this beautiful and powerful dream team for playing, rehearsing, and performing to the guitar players!
ABOUT THE KEMPER KONE SPEAKERS
The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full range speaker which is exclusively designed by Celestion for KEMPER. By simply activating the PROFILER’s well-known Monitor CabOff function the KEMPER Kone is switched from full-range mode to the Speaker Imprint Mode, which then exactly mimics one of 19 classic guitar speakers.
Since the intelligence of the speaker lies in the DSP of the PROFILER, you will be able to switch individual speaker imprints along with your favorite rigs, without needing to do extensive editing.
The Zilla KEMPER KONE loaded 2x12“ cabinets can be custom designed and ordered for an EU price of £675,- UK price of £775,- and US price of £800,- - all including shipping (excluding taxes outside of the UK).
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com or zillacabs.com.