I I have never needed to These kinds of ideas form the basics of chord tone soloing. This is also true for a minor song, where they chords might be Am7, Dm7, E7, and the A minor pentatonic can be put to great use there too. While this "does the job" as far as creating that bluesy sound, there is a far more effective and expressive way of playing through blues … If you want to connect the chords to the key-scale, you may target chord tones within the scale patterns based on the CAGED shapes. In addition to everything else that is included with a Full Access Membership, many lessons include “Full Access Extras”. As you may have noticed, the A minor pentatonic scale doesn’t contain the C#-note. Brian, you put a warning sign on this lesson! Even better if one of the chord tones isn't in the pentatonic. Chord Tone Soloing – A Simple Method. This progression is 1 /// 4 /// 1 /// 1 /// 4 /// 4 /// 1 /// 1 /// 5 /// 4 /// 1 / 4 / 1 / 5 /. Pentatonic position #1 can either be major or minor. Your email address will not be published. We’re using pick and fingers to enable shifting to more conventional flatpicked linking phrases, but fingerstyle is a completely valid option here, too. I’ve been trying this with a simple G, C, D chord progression but it always sounds a bit odd when shifting pentatonic. This opening phrase is as much about the rhythm as any melodic content. Instant access to chord tones means it’s easier to think about soloing patterns and licks. With this technique you are able to choose the notes that will sound best at any given moment in your solo. The method given in this lesson is an alternative approach. In this chord tones lesson we will learn to target the notes in each individual chord of the 12-bar blues progression and adjust our soloing approach slightly for each one. I always appreciate your comments! Are you starting to see why beginner blues guitarists get stuck in their progress on the guitar? What I have been explaining now, is Chord Tone Targetting. Overcoming Your Blues Guitar Frustrations By Understanding How Chords and Scales Are Related. Your email address will not be published. The problem is that it is somewhat difficult to remember all of these different patterns and shapes. Additionally, if you have been soloing using the major pentatonic over the I chord, then switching to the minor pentatonic will add greater variety to your soloing. Soloing Over Blues Progressions - A More Effective Approach. Let me break it down for you why this is.The A7 chord contains 4 notes, which we already looked at. If we were writing a song in C major, we could pick three chords: C – Dm – G – C Verses usually have melodies that are lower in pitch. Unlike the other chord changes this one leaves 2 changes in the notes of the modes. You can see this for yourself below. I like to combine a CAGED triad, an arpeggio, a pentatonic scale, and a major scale. You can think of this scale as a pentatonic version of the Mixolydian mode, which has a formula of 1–2–3–4–5–6–b7. When the chords change from C7 back to G7, try going from B♭ to B, then playing the G7 chord tones. Great blues guitarists will use the D dominant pentatonic scale when improvising over the  D7 chord in a dominant blues progression. I could not put my ax down! They will sound really good, because these tones can be found within the chord. However, if you truly want to sound great with your playing it is essential to have the ability to both play “in key” and “connect your playing with the underlying chords”. How Practicing Chord Tone Targetting Will Get You A Better Guitarist. When all of the chords belong to the same key, we can use pentatonic scales for each chord, apart from the diminished (vii) chord, and still not stray from the key. Because many blues progressions utilize I-IV-V chord changes you will often be utilizing Minor Pentatonic & Blues and/or Major Pentatonic as potential lead playing avenues. You know your guitar playing can improve, but you have no clue how to do it. So for instance I know that in Major pentatonic position 1 I can find 3 versions of a triad while in Major pentatonic position 2 I have only two possiblilites to play a triad. Using the major or minor pentatonic as a base and then hitting the chord tones of the current chord at the right times. That’s the reason the article I refer to is called ‘How To Break Through Your Guitar Soloing Limitations – A Story About Chord Tone Soloing And The Dominant Pentatonic Scale’. When the chords change from C7 to D7, try going from F to F#, then play the D7 chord tones. We can see why this works if we break down the scale and chord notes. Once you get used to this whole “one pentatonic box per chord” method, you can then realize that there are only 3 shapes that you will need to remember. I wonder if it’s because I make C sound like Am and D like Bm cos I’m used to aiming for chord notes in the minor pentatonic. Think back to the moment when you just learned to improvise on guitar and played your first licks in the minor pentatonic scale. This is especially common in blues based music, and it works great. Step 1 – Apply the Basic “Pentatonic Box #1” to Each Chord. Since the first chord of the progression is F#m, we can just go ahead and call this a “minor progression in the key of F# minor”. In this article we will talk about a few simple techniques to break through these limitations and take your blues guitar soloing to a whole new level. Any thoughts? Now, you would simply just apply this basic pentatonic box #1 to each chord. I took the pains to rule up a sheet, even using a stencil to mark/circle each scale note. The chord tones are always going to be the best sounding notes within the scale, so try to land on chord tones just as the chord changes occur. How Do You Use the Pentatonic Scale to Solo? know it. The minor pentatonic and the blues scale are the most common ways to play over a dominant blues progression, but these are definitely not the best ways of soloing if you want to sound like your favorite blues guitarists. This isn’t always true for major chords, so only focus on the triad tones for those. Here is the scalar framework for the key of F# minor spanned over the fretboard. While you can get by without necessarily learning chord tone soloing, the extra dimension it adds to your playing really makes it worthwhile investment of your practice time. That is what step 2 is for…, Step 2 – Start to Extend each Pentatonic Box into its’ Neighboring Positions. 12:53 – Part 4: Adding in the Remaining Diatonic Scale Notes to Each Pentatonic Box Pattern Let’s just go with the higher octave because leads sound cooler when played up high :). Sounds recognizable? For each of the 10 chord progressions, you can choose which key that you want to jam in as well as the concept that you want to work on – Pentatonic Scale, Blues Scale, Diatonic Scale, Scale Combining or Chord Tone Targeting. It’s a slow minor blues with just a handful of changes; we can fall back on the minor pentatonic scale, and we don’t need to learn any new scales or patterns to be able to outline the chords. This scale is completely tied to the D7 chord and therefore will sound much more professional when applied over a D7. This lesson on chord tone soloing for blues guitar is one of my favorite ways to teach my students how to play licks and lines that make more sense than just going up and down a pentatonic or blues scale. Thinking of pentatonic scales this way is really powerful. Try experimenting with different notes and listen to the feeling they give you! When I got to the diatonic scales at the end- bammm. Triads with widely spaced voicings like this are great for giving a ‘bigger’ sound when you’re looking to fill harmonic space. You see these notes again in the left colomn below. Why? Thanks Brian. Soloing by Key is the easiest method of soloing because you treat the entire song as one entity. Steal from the best and all that… King’s interpretation of, ‘The Thrill Is Gone’, is a great tune to start experimenting with soloing over chord changes. When you get to the D7 chord, try hitting either the F sharp note or the C natural, which is not in the A major pentatonic scale, but is in the D7 chord. See Everything that Zombie Guitar has to Offer! Why The Minor Pentatonic Scale Is The Most Overrated Scale To Solo Over Blues Chords, A minor pentatonic scale (with added major 3rd). Wish you could bottle this stuff! This will allow you to practice chord tone targeting in each of the 5 positions. I was working on the triads and arpeggio coursed but man, this one started to connect the dots so to speak. am studing if now. As these chords move, B.B.King is known to move positions with them, keeping things nice and simple. For example, here is a great Stevie Ray Vaughan lick you can use over the D7 chord:Listen to this sound exampleIf you’d like to know more about how great blues guitarists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan use the dominant pentatonic scale in their soloing you can download my FREE Guide on How To Play The Most Awesome Blues Licks Over Any Chord: Awesome Blues Licks. You also know where the chord tones are located within each pattern. They have no clue why their guitar playing doesn’t even come close to that of the guitarists they admire; they are using the WRONG scales! I’m old af now and still at it! You could call this the “shortcut method” if you’d like, because it involves simply moving this basic pentatonic box around to different areas of the fretboard: By doing this, you will still remain 100% in-key (provided that the underlying chords in the progression are all part of just one key). Skipping ahead a few bars, I’m spelling out the B minor chord with a quick rake into a short pentatonic phrase, before combining some pentatonic doublestops to make an A minor 9th-7th descending phrase lifted straight from Little Wing. F# minor pentatonic over the F# minor chord, A major pentatonic over the A major chord, E major pentatonic over the E major chord, D major pentatonic over the D major chord. The late, great B.B. There’s another jazz pentatonic scale over a dominant 7th chord that gives off a different vibe. This is done by selecting a scale that works over the entire key and only playing its notes. 17:51 – Taking the “Soloing with Pentatonics” Concept even Further…. Step 3 – Recognize where the Chord Tones are Located Within Each Pentatonic Box. I personally like to use the “upper extension” for each box as you can see here: By doing this, you are still “switching pentatonics” over each chord, but you are extending the range such that your playing sounds less jumpy. The only difference is where the scale root, or “tonal center” is located within the pattern: Notice that the only difference is where the root is located (the colored dot). In that case we raise the F note to an F# and also play the 9th, which is the E note. Determine the key of the chord progression that you will be soloing over, 2.) First off, let’s take a look at what a lot of beginner/intermediate guitarists think is the correct way of Chord Tone Soloing. For the A major chord, you would locate the “box” with your pinky finger on the 17th fret, which is the note ‘A’. Let’s look at how this happens and how to overcome these guitar playing barriers. This is much easier than trying to memorize all the different CAGED shapes in conjunction with all the different scale shapes. My teacher has pointed me to chord-tone soloing. That is the way a lot of guitarists approach the whole concept of “soloing over a chord progression”, and that’s completely fine! Choose the appropriate scale based on the key (ie. In this instance, it would be derived from E Mixolydian … Basically, such a dominant seventh chord is built up using 4 notes: -    The Root note (R) : A-    The major 3rd (3) : C#-    The 5th (5) : E-    The flat 7th (b7) : GAs the A7 chord contains these four notes, they are also a great choice to land on when soloing. Just transposing the minor pentatonic scale over the D chord is done by A LOT of beginner guitarists, but NO professional blues guitarist would ever dare to do this! 0:00 – Intro Demo There are three ways to play the pentatonic scale pattern for lead guitar solo: A progression in a major key […] For example, if the song has the chords A7, D7, E7, you can sound great just using the A minor pentatonic scale. If we analyze the D7 chord and the D minor pentatonic scale, we see that the chord contains an F#, while the scale comprises an F note. Chord Tone soloing does not restrict you to play "inside" the track: you can choose to deliberately violate it to sound "outside" like some Jazz players do. 1:31 – Intro to the “One Pentatonic per Chord” Approach Beginner’s Guide to Expanding the Pentatonic Scale, Creating 10 Different “Sounds” Within Pentatonic Position #1, 1 video backing track which uses the same chord progression as in the video, The video contains a full fretboard diagram displaying the key of F# minor with “moving pentatonics” as the chords change in the rhythm section, For a minor chord, you would locate the “pentatonic box” with your index finger, For a major chord, you would locate the “pentatonic box” with your pinky finger. Want to seriously up your guitar game regardless of your level? 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