Howard Roberts / Pat Martino Sonic Shapes riff, inside/outside, abstract


Sonic shapes is a phrase that Howard Roberts coined in the '70s when he wrote a column for guitar player.
The guitar is essentially a geometric device of grids and cells with the strings as the horizontal grid borders and
the frets being the vertical grid borders. The interesting thing about this concept is that he advocated keeping the
integrity of the shape even when you transitioned across the G-B strings which break the melodic pattern of
symetry due to the 3rd between those 2 strings. Practically speaking, this allows the shapes to have someone of
an abstract sound to them since they are asymetrical. Note that Pat Martino used this device quite a bit too though
I never heard him list Howard Roberts as an influence. The basic shape I'm using in this example can be heard in the
2nd 8 bars of Pat's solo on Oleo.


Howard theorized that you could take shapes and apply them to the grid of the guitar neck, and he decided to call
these sonic shapes.


This is a simple shape that uses a 1-2-3 finger pattern over 3 consecutive strings. In this example, I play the shape
3x chromatically on each set of 3 strings. As mentioned in the introduction, the pattern breaks (melodically)
in measures 4 and 5 because of the tuning but it adds to the exoticness of the sound. I typically play these with
hybrid picking but you can use alternate or economy picking too.





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