Utilizing Open-String Drones for Single-Note Licks, Melodies and Solos

Incorporating the use of an open string as a “drone” within licks and solo lines is a great, creative way to establish the sound of harmony while playing a single-note phrase. Drones figure prominently in Indian classical music, as heard on instruments such as the sitar and sarod. 

The concept is simple: while a melody is played up and down one string, an additional open string (or strings) is sounded simultaneously, most often serving to establish a reference to the tonic, or “one” chord, which represents the home key of the piece of music.

On electric guitar, the strings used most often for drone-type licks are the open low E and A, but I’d like to kick things off with utilizing the open G string as our drone, and the lines played around it will be in the key of G, establishing the G note as our tonic. The next choice to make is to decide what scale to base your melody on, so let’s begin with the G Mixolydian mode (G A B C D E F), which alludes to the sound of a G7 (dominant) chord. 

This is an easy mode to remember because there are no sharps or flats; G Mixolydian also comprises the same seven notes as the C major scale (C D E F G A B). 

FIGURE 1 illustrates G Mixolydian played in second/third position, ascending and descending. Let’s apply the drone-string concept by picking each note of the G Mixolydian mode, as fretted on the A string, simultaneously with the open G note, as demonstrated in FIGURE 2: the constant presence of the G tonic serves to clearly depict the sound and quality of each of the intervals in G Mixolydian, so focus on the sound of A, the second,