I was practising earlier today and ran across a situation that has me confused. For the moment, my current practice session consists of me playing roots, thirds, fifths and octaves for every fret on the fretboard (I play a five-string 24 fret Ibanez SR305) that I am likely to ever want to use in major and minor. So on my low B I will go up to the G or G# and then drop down to the open E and continue. When I hit the D# on fret 1 of the D string in major, I can hit it’s third and fifth easily on the G string, but the octave D# is way up on the G string at fret 8. How would this be normally handled? Is this a case where if I know I will be hitting the octave D# I will not play it down low on the D string at all and instead play the D# on the 6th fret of the A string instead so I can more easily reach the octave D# on the G? Or do you play the D# low on the D string and then make a flying leap to fret 8 on the G? That seems to be a very limiting way of doing it especially if you are playing relatively fast.
If I’m playing octaves, I’m almost always going to want to hit the one two frets over and two strings up. So in your case, the D#s on A string 6th fret and G string 8th fret.
If you’re playing exercises it’s easy to get backed into some very impractical corners.
You just found a good one.
Yeah, there are very very few scenarios where you’re going to be diving down the fretboard to play octaves, particularly at fast tempos.
Usually, things will be more reachable and practical.
But, of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
On the ‘50 songs’ list, song 50 is “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi.
That song has a great example of leaping up the fretboard for a note that could be played lower…
But the reason you go up for it is because it immediately goes to a yet-higher note… so the position jump needs to happen.
There will always be examples of outliers.
I think learning that leap from the fifth to the octave on one string is a great muscle memory thing to practice, but it is certainly not in my list of 100 most important things to practice.
Thanks all for the responses. This is more a question I think that will affect how I jam and write music, as when I am playing someone else’s music it’s all decided for me. I think I will add single-string octaves to my list of things to practice.
