Unisons
Unisons are a great way to fill out the sound of a note and give it more sustain. A unison is two notes of the same octave played together. They don’t have any sort of weird or special sound, but they pack a punch that helps emphasize certain notes.
The easiest way to play a unison is to use open strings. Just like you were tuning relative, you play the 5th fret on the E string along with open A to get an A unison. The 4th fret on the C string along with open E to get an E unison, and with a low G, the 5th fret on the G string to go with open C – C unison. Or with a high G, you can get a G unison by playing the top string along with the 3rd fret, E string. Here they are in tab:
A |-0-|---|---|---|
E |-5-|-0-|---|-3-|
C |---|-4-|-0-|---|
G |---|---|-5-|-0-|
These are easy, but to get to the rest of the notes, you need to do some stretching.
With a low G string, you can move these shapes around to get different unisons:
A |-3-|---|---|
E |-8-|-3-|---|
C |---|-7-|-4-|
G |---|---|-9-|
With a high G it is even easier. You can use the first two that also work with a low G, but also this shape:
A |-3-|
E |---|
C |---|
G |-5-|
There are a couple articulations that I like to use with unisons: slides, hammer ons, and bends.
Slides and hammer ons work best with open string unisons because with the closed positions, your fingers are already stretched pretty far, leaving little room for moving.
A |--0-|---0-|
E |-/5-|-3h5-|
C |----|-----|
G |----|-----|
Bends are a little easier with closed positions because you are actually lowering the number of frets that you have to stretch.
A |-5----|
E |-9b10-|
C |------|
G |------|
