Fills, and Taking It to Another Key

A fill is what you play in the hole at the end of a vocal phrase. That is the definition, and it contains the two rules that matter: it goes in the hole, and it stops when the hole does.

Singers phrase in two or four bar chunks, and they almost always finish early, leaving a beat or two before the next line starts. That gap is yours. It is usually shorter than people think — about two beats — which is why the short double-stop phrases from lessons three and four are exactly the right size. A fill that runs into the vocal is not a fill, it is a mistake, and no amount of good note choice rescues it.

So you already have the vocabulary. What you need is to be able to put it in any key, because songs are not all in C.

Moving it is easier than it looks, because these are shapes, not fret numbers. The sixths pattern from lesson four is a sequence of two-note shapes with a fixed relationship to the key's root — find the root on the third string, and the whole pattern lines up from there.

Here is the same descending sixths idea in F, for a track in F. Compare it with the phrase in lesson four: identical shapes, moved.

A descending sixths fill in F

F-D, E-C, D-B flat, C-A. The same four-pair descent you played in C, relocated. The second string stays muted throughout.

e
B
G
D
A
E

--10-----8-----6-----5--|
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--10-----9-----7-----5--|
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A practice routine that puts the whole path together. Pick a soul track in any key. Find the root on the third string. Play one pass using only triads on the backbeat. Play a second pass adding one two-beat fill at the end of every fourth bar. Play a third pass where you deliberately play half as much as the second.

That third pass is usually the best one, and noticing that is the point of this path. Nearly every soul guitar part that sounds right sounds right because of what was left out.

A soul groove in F. Find F on the third string at the tenth fret, and the sixths pattern above lines up from there.

Where to go next. Funk Rhythm Guitar: Living in the Pocket takes the right-hand side of this much further, into continuous sixteenth-note playing. CAGED: Five Shapes, the Whole Fretboard will help you find these voicings everywhere rather than in one position. And if the seventh chords in lesson seven were unfamiliar, Music Theory for Guitarists explains where they come from.