Practising/Playing melodies on a single string.

[bako]

Consciously work on a few intervals at a time with different fingering configurations, slowly.
Knowing the sound of what you are shifting to helps immensely.

Playing melodies of songs that you already can play in position which are often a mix of scale steps and leaps.

[Jimmy blue note]

How do I do wide interval leaps (5th and higher) on single strings with more ease?

Visually, use the presence of neck dots or fingerboard inlays to mark the "landscape" of the fingerboard. Familiarity with where the actual notes are for each and every key will allow you to know exactly where you want to go.

Aurally, train your ear so you know which intervals are involved in the leap. It's important that you can hear where on the scale you want to go in making a wide leap. Train your ear to recognize absolute and relative intervals; see and hear the fingerboard as a map or a living landscape. It's not an arbitrary void and nor is it a gut leap...or least not at first.

Kinesthetically, be aware of the physical movement that is required for a specific amount of sound. This is the product of PRACTICE, TIME, PATIENCE and PERSISTENCE. Pick tunes for their combinations of narrow (scale up to 4th) and wide (5th and above) leaps and like any practiced artist or sports, learn to visualize with your body.

Learn to visualize, hear, move and think ahead musically. This is a combination of all of the above but I believe most of the time people don't make wide interval leaps cleanly is because that precision hasn't been learned. You see a mosquito flying, you swat it, your body knows. You reach for a cup of coffee, you grab it while you're reading the morning paper, your body knows. Use your ear, fret markers, visualization of the scale on the string, you'll get it.

[pauln]

How do I do wide interval leaps (5th and higher) on single strings with more ease?

There is a popular phrase now days used to answer questions like how did you go bankrupt?, how did this institution crash?, etc. "Gradually, then all at once." Sometimes that is the same answer to describe a success when the last step was a conceptual realization that changes everything.

Fingering is always conceptual as well as mechanical. Both invoke constraints on the other. Constraints are not automatically negative, depending on their effect.

Mechanical constraints involve body parts:
- how many fingers (three or four)
- stretch or move
- positions or free
and for right hand
- picking styles
- finger styles
- thumb

Conceptual constraints involve "I have to know";
- note names
- interval names
- the key
- functional harmony
- what it sounds like
- what am I about to play next

If you watch Wes playing, his self imposed mechanical constraint is to use his thumb which other's close observations conclude is almost entirely down strokes.

In order for his lines to flow he developed a mechanical solution which involved the conceptual constraint of having to know what and where he was going play after the present phrase (needing to know where he was about to be). This is why Wes never sounded like he was "noodling"; the mechanical requirement for planning ahead promoted gorgeous sounding execution. It is clear to me that because of this, conceptually he does not "play positions" - just plays "the neck".

Watch him here... my favorite version of 'RM.

- starts with an open string(!) and successive phrases are new "positions"
- when he starts his solo about 2:40 the camera is wonderfully in close. Notice not that he is just all over the neck, but that his fingering (constantly "shifting positions") is specifically setting up and placing the mechanically best strings from which to launch each phrase for the thumb to play...

Anyway, I think in general the playing on one string thing makes a lot more sense if one releases themselves conceptually from the idea of playing positions. It may feel like the problem is that of changing positions fast enough, but the real problem may be thinking of positions at all (at least when singling stringing it).

I'm a self taught ear player and never conceived of positions; I have always mechanically moved freely as needed (and moved freely even when not needed).

[MiniMerckx.22]

Yeah, you should know the notes horizontally up and down the string and do some practice improvising melodies like this, outside of common shapes or patterns. But as far as performing with such restraints, I will say that I greatly enjoyed John Abercrombie for years, had several well worn albums. But when he started doing the one string thing at length, I lost interest pretty quickly. Checked back some time later and he was the same thing. I say work on it for what you can get out of it then move on.