Filling in the Gaps
Okay, back to the shapes. So far we've been looking chords but I can tell you're all gagging to make a start on some nice, juicy arpeggios. So lets start by looking again at our full movable major shapes.
One obvious difference between the ‘red’ and the ‘blue’ shapes is that the red shapes contain no ‘3’ note. With our new-found knowledge of intervals, correcting this should be a doddle. We know that 3 is a M3 above 1.
By treating our red roots as the lower note in the interval, including the higher one gives us what we want:1
One way to familiarise yourself with these shapes is to start on the lowest root; play the notes in ascending order until you reach the highest not in the shape; play the notes in descending order until you reach the lowest note; and (if you're not already there) ascend to the note you started on. Here are some examples,
[6]3
[5]3
[4]3
[3]3
[2]4
Let's give the minor chords the same treatment. Starting again with the basic shapes.
This time, the note missing from the ‘red subshapes’ is ♭3. Of course we know that that note is a m3 above 1. In order to keep the shapes compact, we'll treat the one-string version as our default for these.2
[6]3m
[5]3m
[4]3m
[3]3m
[2]4m
