Electric Guitar: Flatted Fifths and Tritones

Flatted fifths are a great way to add a sinister or menacing sound to your electric guitar playing. They also fall on the fret board in a way that makes them easy to "finger" or fret, which you will see below. The interval of a flatted fifth is also known as a tritone, since it is equivalent to playing an interval that spans exactly three whole tones. I.e., if you choose a certain note, then split the pitches in half from where the original note repeats an octave higher, then you will have a tritone (work this out on your fretboard). Here is an A tritone with E flat, its flatted fifth, in the center:

D string: |-------7---|

A string: |-----6-----|

E string: |--5--------|

Tritones can also add a pseudo-jazzy quality to your solos and improvisations. I actually got the idea for the following exercise after hearing one "outside-sounding" portion of a Danny Gatton solo (Gatton was a great blues and country guitar player with a phenomenal hybrid picking technique) in which he played a series of tritones in different places around the neck. The following exercise is devoted to helping you play fast tritones in different areas of the fretboard (apologies for the messy tablature, but I can't use a fixed-width font in this article).

|--------------|--------------|

|--------------|--------------|

|--------------|-----5-----7-|

|-----5-----7-|---4-----6---|

|---4-----6---|-3-----5-----|

|-3-----5-----|-------------|

~

|--------------|-----6-----8---|

|-----6-----8-|---5-----7-----|

|---4-----6---|-3-----5-------|

|-3-----5-----|---------------|

|--------------|----------------|

|--------------|----------------|

(Even though the tablature above is admittedly crude, I hope it's clear what notes should be played.)

Notice the exercise breaks down as simply playing tritones a whole step apart while ascending up the strings. Once you have this exercise down well using a metronome, try the same idea except starting on the high E string and descending (which is simply a reversal of the exercise above):

|-8-----6-----|---------------|

|---7-----5---|-8-----6------|

|-----5-----3-|---6-----4----|

|--------------|-----5-----3--|

|--------------|----------------|

|--------------|----------------|

~

|--------------|---------------|

|--------------|---------------|

|-7-----5-----|---------------|

|---6-----4---|-7-----5-------|

|-----5-----3-|---6-----4-----|

|-------------|-----5-----3---|

Get these tritones flying at a quick tempo so that if you ever want to play a passage that sounds particularly jazzy or "outside," you can transition with ease into some blazing flatted fifths during a live jam over different portions of the neck.

Concerning the flatted fifth interval, it is also known as "diabolus in musica" or "the Devil in music" since it sounds so evil and disturbing. Flatted fifths are actually classified as a "dissonance," and interestingly enough they were banned in the mid 1600s - any musician caught playing them or composing music in which they were featured was automatically excommunicated, since it was believed that tritones could actually summon the devil.