So… this is the first entry in my blog for the improvising guitarist. I want to start with a very simple idea to create a piano-like comping of your single-note lines when improvising in a modal context on a minor 7 chord.

The thing with `self-comping´on the guitar is that you can not delegate the comping-soloing roles to the two hands like a pianist. The left hand has to manage playing chords and melodies at the same time. It is obvious that the more fingers you need to play a chord the less fingers you have left over to play lines. So what could be more practical than one finger chords?

When you harmonize a major scale and it´s modes (in this case dorian) with three-note-voicings in fourth you get five voicings out of seven which consist exclusively of natural fourths. The other two voicings contain augmented fourths. They sound great but you need more than one finger to play them.

The four low strings on the guitar are tuned in natural fourths, so all five natural-fourths-voicings can be played on string groups E-A-D and A-D-G with one finger.

I think of two areas on the fretboard where these voicings are located, one around the root note on the A-String (EX. 1) and one around the root note on the low E-String (EX. 2). Check the pdf for the voicings and their location on the fretboard.

Check my video to hear and see an improvisation with extensive use of the one finger chords on a standard modal progression used in tunes like `So What´ or `Impressions´.

Here´s the pdf.