Play an A7 chord and listen for the C♯ inside it. That note is the chord’s third, and it is what makes the chord sound major and bright. Now play the C from your box over the same chord. The two notes are a semitone apart, and you can hear them rub against each other.
That rub is not a mistake to avoid. It is the sound of the blues, and players rarely leave the C still: they push it part of the way toward C♯, or all the way, and let it back. The note lives between the minor third of the scale and the major third of the chord, which is where this course takes its name.
Between the minor and the major third
A quarter tone on ♭3
C pushed a quarter tone sounds between C and C♯, between the ♭3 and the 3, and stops short of the next fret.
Half step: ♭3 up to 3
C bent a half step sounds C♯, the same note as the sixth fret on this string, so that fret is what the bend has to match.
A quarter tone on ♭3 and half step: ♭3 up to 3.
Each curve is one note's pitch over two beats, with every semitone the same height, and the dashed line is the note it has to reach. The tab beside it writes the same thing the way printed tab does.
Only over the I
C is the blue third over A7, and only there. Over D7 the same C is the chord’s own seventh, a note to land on. Over E7 it sits a semitone above the chord’s fifth and wants to fall onto it. So one fret has three different jobs as the chords change, and the score below follows it through all twelve bars.
One note, twelve bars
C bends up over A7 C bends up over A7 C bends up over A7 C bends up over A7 C rests over D7 C rests over D7 C bends up over A7 C bends up over A7 C leans onto B over E7 C rests over D7 C bends up over A7 C leans onto B over E7
Read the row: it bends up over A7, rests over D7 and leans onto B over E7. A filled disc is a note you can stop on, a tick under it leans onto the note below and a tick over it bends up into the note above.
In a phrase
Down from the third
Down from the third, over A7: ♭3 C, 1 A, ♭7 G, 5 E, 4 D, ♭3 C, 1 A.
Seven notes over four beats. It starts on the ♭3, bent up to the 3 and let back, and comes to rest on the root, with vibrato. The dashed lines are the notes of A7, and that last note is one of them.
The phrase starts on the blue third, pushed up to the chord’s third and let back, then walks down the box to the root. Play it over bar one of the twelve bars, where A7 is sounding, and then over bar five, where D7 is, and listen to the first note lose its bite.
This lesson was drafted with the help of AI, so it may contain a mistake. Its diagrams are drawn by Everyfret’s own software. How Everyfret is made