I was driving my kids to school the other day, and a Maren Morris song (“The Bones”) came on the radio. We’d been listening to her after watching the Wild Robot movie, and my wife and I both liked the soundtrack. But what stood out to me was the guitar part. It was 10ths. They have a specific sound that is clear immediately, once you know what you’re listening for.
What a tenth is
A tenth is a third with an octave in between. Count up ten scale degrees instead of three and you land on the same note as the 3rd, an octave higher. C up to E is a major third. C up to the E an octave beyond that is a major tenth (C D E F G A B C D E). Lower the E to Eb and you have a minor tenth.
The major-or-minor color doesn’t change, there is just more space between the notes.
If intervals as sound — rather than shape — is a new idea, this post is the place to start.
Why the space is important
Play a third low on the guitar — C at the 3rd fret of the A string, E at the 2nd fret of the D string. This is close harmony. Close intervals in the low register can blur together. As an aside, I spent a lot of time a couple weeks ago reading about when that gets too blurry as I was figuring out the low part of the praeludio in Bach’s Lute Suite in Em (996). I ended up coming across some orchestration books that talk about the limit.
The two shapes
On guitar, tenths come down to two movable shapes (or grips, as Joe Pass calls them in one of my favorite instructional videos).
Root on the 6th string, tenth on the 3rd string. The minor tenth sits at the same fret as the root, and the major tenth is one fret higher:
Root on the 5th string, tenth on the 2nd string. Same idea, but everything on top shifts up a fret (the B string’s tuning, as usual):
These shapes also work on the 4th and 1st string, for the record.
Two fingers each. You can skip or mute the strings in between — fingerstyle or hybrid picking makes this easy, thumb/pick on the bass note and a finger on top. Because the shapes are movable, you can walk them up a scale: major shape where the scale gives you a major third, minor shape where it gives you a minor one, and you’re harmonizing the whole scale in tenths.
Where you’ve heard this
“Blackbird” is one of the most famous examples. McCartney plays two moving lines — melody on top, bass underneath — mostly a tenth apart (but not always), with the open G string ringing in the middle the whole time. The basic idea came from Bach’s Bourrée in E minor for lute, which McCartney has mentioned as an influence; Blackbird reimagines that two‑voice counterpoint as folk‑fingerstyle tenths with open strings filling in the harmony. Doug Niedt has an incredible solo guitar arrangement of it, if you want a challenge.
“Scar Tissue” is another great one (and the first I learned). There’s a fun rabbit hole here: Paul Davids made a video about why nobody can quite match the sound of the record, and the answer — confirmed by Frusciante himself — is that one of his strings was tuned slightly different. It happened to sweeten the interval, so it stayed. Tuning is a whole thing unto itself. My friend Neil Haverstick works in microtonal systems — 19‑tone, 22‑tone and beyond — and is a fantastic resource if you want to hear what happens to these kinds of intervals when you stop assuming 12‑tone equal temperament.
If you want a polemic on our modern tuning system, Ross Duffin’s book How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) is a great read. He walks through how our standard 12‑tone equal temperament slightly distorts pure thirds and tenths compared to just intonation, and why that matters if you’re listening closely to the “sweetness” of intervals. (this applies directly to Scar Tissue)
This sound is all over modern pop. “Love Yourself,” by Justin Bieber, “Fresh Eyes,” by Andy Grammer, and “The Bones” (the Maren Morris tune I mentioned) all lean on tenths in their acoustic guitar parts. Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” puts a similar two‑note logic on dulcimer.
Years ago I checked out Martin Taylor’s ArtistWorks course, and I believe that early on he talks about the importance of tenths for arranging. Martin is one of my favorite guitarists, and as far as I’m concerned, he is the best alive at solo jazz guitar. If you want to hear where you can go with that, his arrangements are a masterclass.
Conclusion
You don’t need a bunch more chord shapes. Two notes, two grips, and most of the harmony you already know shows up with more air in it. When you’re backing a singer, tenths can help stay out of the vocal’s way. When you’re alone, they make one guitar sound like an arrangement.
And learning to hear them is the easy part, because the sound got into your head years before the theory did. Listen for the tenths:
The Beatles
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Joni Mitchell
Justin Bieber
Andy Grammer
Maren Morris
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