Ralph Mooney for Guitar...

One of the best shows I've ever heard was Merle Haggard performing at the Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas. I watched the whole set from side stage.... the sound was perfect and his band was so on point. I've learned a lot of Merle tunes since then...

I recently revisited the song Swinging Doors after butchering it in bars for years. What knocked me out was Ralph Mooney's pedal steel accompaniment in the first verse after the intro. I transcribed it and adapted it for guitar (shown below..N.B. bends aren't notated so listen to the audio).

His playing is so busy, but oh so good. Instead of playing the intro and keeping it sparse when Merle starts singing, the opposite happens. He nails the intro, and then just continues blowing this incredible counter line to Merle's vocal through the first verse. He ducks out at the chorus.

 I love the way Mooney surfs and bubbles along with the meter, never getting in Merle's way. Ignore the notes and just clap the rhythm of the whole passage notated below! The note choices are perfect, of course, but I think the biggest take away for me is how he swings, how he uses anticipations and how he feels triplets. His phrases rarely start on a downbeat. He puts such solid rhythmic momentum into play.... none of his phrases ever seem awkward or out of place. Hope you dig it!

Uncover your fifths and octaves.

If you've grown up playing rock and pop music like I did, it can often be confusing to try and construct more intricate chord progressions out of meat and potatoes guitar chord voicings .

Progressions and voicings like these are common work great. 

These chord voicings are powerful. They are not subtle, however. If you look at the construction of the intervals you have an octave and a fifth interval anchoring each voicing (power chord), with a third on top. Each chord progresses to the next chord (which is also constructed with the exact same intervals) by similar motion. What is heard is not the individual notes of the chord moving to the next, but big blocks of sound moving through sonic space. 

I always wanted chords to move more like melodies, rather than just jumping from one rock chord grip to the next. In school I took a lot of traditional harmony courses. I enjoyed the sound of Bach chorales. Writing in that style, however, was a bit of a puzzle … a puzzle with a lot of rules. The rule that gave me the most grief was 'parallel and hidden (covered) octaves and fifths'. It went like this: 

Given a chord progression with four notes per chord, ‘any two voices of that chord are not permitted to move to another in such a way that they form a succession of two perfect fifths or octaves in parallel motion’. (para. Allan Forte)

‘Hidden (or covered) octaves and fifths are formed when any two voices move into a fifth or octave by similar motion’. (para. Elie Siegmeister) 

Here are the top and middle voices leaping into a fifth. 

I had some time over the holidays to go down a serious trad harmony rabbit hole. I was trying to think of a method to translate big blocks of chord progressions into more open sounding fluid ones.

This is what I came up with… (Well, kind of stole it from Paul Hindemith's Craft of Musical Composition)

1. Choose the note of each chord that you want to be the highest voice. Stick to triads for now. Choose the root, third or fifth. 

2. Choose the lowest note of each progression. This is where the parallel/covered octave/fifth rule comes in to play. The easiest way to avoid parallelism is to make sure these two outer voices move in a contrary (opposite) direction.

Contrary motion works well, because the rules above apply only to voices moving in the same direction.  Avoiding parallel octaves and fifths at this stage is important, because we are dealing with the outer (most important) two voices of the chord. If the outer two voices form a strong harmonic framework, the rules applied to the inner voices can be relaxed a little. (N.B. it is ok to have parallelism if the harmony stays the same, i.e. different inversions of the same chord).

3. Fill in the middle note. Notice I’m only dealing with 3 note triadic progressions. There is a certain openness and clarity to triads, especially when played on guitar. My guitar teacher Jon Damian always told me that you can play a three note chord on guitar and it will sound massive, whereas you play the same three notes on a piano and… meh… 

This is the place to be careful of parallel and hidden 5ths/octaves. If you must have two voices move into a fifth or octave, make sure one of the voices moves by step while the other leaps.

This:

Note that omitting the 5th and doubling the root is a good option

is better than this

Another option is where one voice stays in the same place and the other voice moves into the fifth or octave.

Not like this... 

The point of all this is not to give a strict lesson in chorale writing. Write out a chord progression consisting of triads. Take a look at how each pair of voices progresses to the next. Avoid all parallel octaves and fifths moving in similar motion.  Also, make sure that if two of your voices are moving into a fifth or octave (in the same direction), that at least one of those voices moves by step while the other leaps.

What you should end up with is a nicely balanced progression, where each voice of the chord is a melody on its own. You should be able to play the progression using two voices instead of three and have it still sound musical.

Also, another quick reminder that you don't need to write these things out on paper. As long as you know where the notes of the triads are on guitar, and you know what a fifth and an octave interval are, you can trouble shoot any progression by ear.

Again:

• Pick the top notes you wish to have in the upper voice
• Pick the lowest notes of the chord progression
• fill in the middle voice of the chord starting with the first chord
• locate your fifth and octave intervals and note the voices in which they appear in
• make sure each octave or fifth is approached by contrary motion, oblique motion (one note in common, and the other moves), or, in the case of similar motion, make sure that the upper voice of the interval proceeds by step, or (if thats not possible) the lower voice proceeds by step and the other leaps

Hope this helps!