Bitonal Guitar

Juampy Juarez introduces bitonality — using two keys at the same time — and shows how to make it work on jazz guitar. The sound is contemporary and dissonant, and while a few pianists like Richie Beirach and the Bad Plus have explored it in jazz, very few guitarists have.

Bitonality is a polemic term: theorists like Paul Hindemith and Milton Babbitt argued it doesn't exist, while composers such as Stravinsky (often called the father of polytonality), Bartók, Copland and Charles Ives used it freely. You can also hear it in Ornette Coleman's double quartet, Sun Ra, and even some Allan Holdsworth. Juampy's key insight for solo guitar: two keys can't be heard in a single frozen "vertical" moment, but they can across a "horizontal" one — as the music unfolds in time.

What's covered

• Bitonal scales: combining two scales that together cover all 12 notes — C major + F# major, C major + B major, or C major + F# major pentatonic
• Practicing the combined scales as parallel b5 and parallel major-7 intervals, with pick-and-fingers technique
• Where to use them: over the I chord in a II–V–I, over Lydian and modal vamps, mixed with traditional lines
• Why two superimposed triads aren't enough to be truly polytonal — and which three-triad combinations are
• The nine-note nonatonic scale (C major plus Eb and Ab) and its subsets as a bimodal resource
• Composing short pieces to internalize the sound, then improvising until lines come from the ear, not the brain

For players drawn to modern, outside sounds who want a genuinely new harmonic world on the instrument. Juampy continues these ideas in his follow-up lesson, Bitonal 2line. Includes a downloadable PDF.