Double stops — two notes played simultaneously — are one of those guitar techniques that look small on paper and end up doing a lot of work in practice. A well-placed pair of notes can imply a chord, accent a melodic line, or create a brief moment of harmonic motion inside what's otherwise a single-note solo. Players like Ed Bickert, Barney Kessel, Johnny Smith, and Howard Roberts built large parts of their soloing vocabulary around them.
Steve Herberman's MMC class Double Stops for Jazz Guitar is the direct treatment of the technique in the catalog. The class is split into two sections: building the vocabulary of interval combinations, then applying them inside actual jazz lines.
Why double stops do so much with so little
A single note over a chord doesn't tell the listener much about your harmonic intent — the chord under you is doing that work. A full chord stops the line and resets the texture. Double stops sit in between. The two notes are enough to imply the chord you're outlining (especially if they're 3rds, 6ths, or 7ths of the underlying harmony) without losing the linear momentum of a single-note solo. The line keeps moving; the chord stays visible.
The Bickert and Smith versions of this technique lean toward sweet thirds and sixths — voice-led chord tones that decorate the melody. Kessel and Roberts often used more dissonant double stops — minor seconds, sevenths — for blues-flavored grit. Both are legitimate vocabularies; the choice depends on the tune and the moment.
What to actually practice
Three interval pairs do most of the work:
- Thirds (major and minor). The most consonant double stops; great for melodic decoration and for outlining major or minor chord quality clearly.
- Sixths (major and minor). The inversion of thirds; same harmonic identity, wider sound. Particularly effective on the higher strings.
- Tritones (the 3rd and 7th of a dominant chord). Two notes that completely define a dominant 7th. Drop these on the V chord of any ii-V-I and the harmony is unmistakable even without a bass note.
Start by playing scales in thirds — pick a key, play the major scale up in two notes a third apart on adjacent strings, then on non-adjacent strings (skip-string thirds have a different sound). Then sixths. Then tritones on every dominant chord in a standard. That's the technical groundwork.
From exercise to line
The harder skill — and Herberman's class focuses here — is integrating double stops into improvised lines without making them sound like an "I'm playing double stops now" exercise. The seam is where most players struggle: they play single-note lines, drop in a couple of double stops, then return to single notes. The transition reads as an effect rather than as part of the line.
The cleanest integration treats double stops as just another note choice: the line is going to land on the 3rd of a chord, so the player chooses to land on the 3rd-and-7th together instead. The harmonic intent is the same; the texture is richer for one note. Trained that way, double stops stop feeling like a special effect and start feeling like an option you have every measure.
Listening references
Beyond the Herberman class, study recordings: Ed Bickert with Paul Desmond, Howard Roberts on the Capitol-era records, Barney Kessel's Contemporary albums, Johnny Smith's "Moonlight in Vermont." The double stops are everywhere once you're listening for them — and that's the point. They should sound integral to the lines, not stuck on top.
