Chord tone soloing is one of those things that either eludes guitarists, or they shy yonder from it in favor of the one-scale-fits-all approach. While you can get by without necessarily learning chord tone soloing, the uneaten dimension it adds to your playing really makes it worthwhile investment of your practice time. In this article, I want to show you a simple method that you can implement scrutinizingly immediately into your playing so that you can start to hit all the right notes in all the right places.
A looper pedal is a unconfined tool to have on hand for practicing chord tone soloing. If you don’t have one already, I’d definitely recommend investing in one such as the Ditto by TC Electronic, the Boss RC-1 Loop Station, or this selection of others. If you don’t have a looper pedal, then simply record yourself with your phone.
Progression 1
The first chord progression we’re going to tackle is Bm – A – E, which is a archetype progression used in songs as diverse as ‘Wicked Game’ by Chris Isaac and ‘You Know, You Know’ by the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Look at the pursuit diagram. The notes in red are from Bm, the notes in visionless undecorous are from A, and the notes in light undecorous are from E, but increasingly importantly, they are the new notes that are introduced as each chord changes. So, when the chord changes from Bm to A, try to land on one of the notes in visionless blue. When we get to the E chord, the only new note is G# – and as we haven’t heard that note yet, its impact is greater; it sounds like your solo is pursuit with the chord changes.
The tideway here then is to hold when on unrepealable notes until the chord changes, then use them to greater effect. There are a couple of other things that you’re learning here; the first is to alimony the notes tropical together on the fretboard so that you’re not jumping all over the place; the second is that you’re bringing increasingly music out of a familiar position on the fretboard – you may recognize Bm Pentatonic in there, and if you take the pattern as a whole, it is in fact B Dorian.
Feel self-ruling to treat this pattern like Bm Pentatonic or B Dorian but with the sensation of what notes to land on/hit when the chords change. For the E chord, by all ways land on the other two notes (B and E) to hear the difference in impact they have compared to landing on the G#.
Progression 2
This progression moreover contains three chords (G, C, and F) that you could play G – C – G – C – F to make sure G is our home chord. You may recognize the pattern unelevated as a C Major scale shape you’ve probably practiced many times, only now we’re going to segregate the notes we play for a greater chord tone soloing effect.
Again, you can play all the notes from the pattern, but withstand in mind that you might want to hold when on some to really outline the changes. When you’re creating your looping tracks, leave plenty of time in between each chord transpiration so that you’re not putting unnecessary pressure on yourself. You could moreover see this progression as a G Mixolydian one, and it is, only the one-scale-fits-all tideway may leave your solo sounding a little aimless. Try them both to compare sounds and see what you think.
Progression 3
Our final progression for this chord tone soloing guide contains a chord that’s not in the key. By using this approach, you can really take wholesomeness of that stray chord instead of just self-glorification past it and hoping for the best. The progression is the archetype Andalusian undulation of Am – G – F – E; the first three chords are in the key of C Major/A Minor, but E is not. Let’s see how it looks on the fretboard.
So, our home chord is Am, followed by G, and with these two chords we’ve ‘used up’ most of the notes, but the A will still sound unconfined over the F considering it’s the major third. To make the most of that out-of-key E chord, that G# is going to sound wondrous considering it hasn’t been played yet and it’s the major third of E. Notice that you’re still unscratched if you play E or B over that E chord, but the G# really makes it sound like you know what you’re doing!
Conclusion – Chord Tone Soloing
There are many approaches to playing over chord changes and variegated things work for variegated players. I like this concept considering it gives you a unrepealable value of tenancy over what you play and should help you finger much less lost on the fretboard. If you want to wield this to any chord progression, use the pursuit steps:
- Decide which is the home chord in the progression (usually the first or last) and segregate ONE zone of the fretboard to mark it out as we did in red above.
- Mark the next chord (as we did in visionless blue), but just the new notes, as closely as possible to the home chord.
- Do the same with any other chords (as we did in light blue), just marking any new notes as closely as possible to the other chords.
- See if you can build some kind of scale pattern virtually the notes. If you can’t, don’t worry – just fill out the repeating notes virtually the chords in the relevant colors.
- Pay special sustentation to any chords that are outside the key.
- Stay in one zone on the fretboard as we did whilom – this is increasingly than unbearable information to start with.
- Load up your looper with the progression leaving unbearable space between chord changes and see what you can come up with.
- Record yourself and listen when to what you played, you might be surprised at how good it sounds, plus this is the quickest way to improve.
If this tideway didn’t quite work for you, trammels out our self-ruling 8-part series, ‘How to Solo Over chord Changes‘, right here on the blog.
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