Chord Tone Solo in A Minor Lesson

- Vasilije Vukmirovic13th October 2008
  Great lesson, you covered every part of the harmony beneath!
- Bogdan Radovic13th October 2008
  Very nice lesson Pedja !! Cool solo ideas!
- Emir Hot13th October 2008
  This is really cool with some great chord changes and target notes approach. Well done
- Nazgul13th October 2008
  Well done, Pedja! This is a really cool solo!
- Pedja Simovic13th October 2008
  Thanks guys !
  Chord tones and arpeggios are very important so my intention was to present that in a musical way. Hope I managed to achieve it
  Next lesson will be combination of everything so look out for that solo - can't wait to hear your opinion on that one!
  
  Pedja
- Ivan Milenkovic13th October 2008
  Very nice solo ideas, and theory lines.
- ItsMe13th October 2008
  very helpfull. It's so important to really focus on the changes. That's my weakest side. So thanks for that lessen
- Nemanja Filipovic13th October 2008
  Nice lesson mate.
- Pedja Simovic13th October 2008
  QUOTE (Ivan Milenkovic @ Oct 13 2008, 03:20 PM)
  Very nice solo ideas, and theory lines.
  
  Thanks Ivan!
  
  QUOTE (Chris76 @ Oct 13 2008, 03:44 PM)
  very helpfull. It's so important to really focus on the changes. That's my weakest side. So thanks for that lessen
  
  I agree with you Chris. I am glad you checked it out. Would love to hear how you are doing with arpeggios and chord tones.
  
  QUOTE (Nemanja Filipovic @ Oct 13 2008, 04:12 PM)
  Nice lesson mate.
  
  Thank you Nemanja , (La Do Mi Do La)
- Muris Varajic13th October 2008
  Sounds nice,smooth playing.
- Capt.Z13th October 2008
  Very nice lesson!!
- Vinod Saranga13th October 2008
  
  Great Lesson Pedja
  I love the 0:28 -0:32 chords progression.
- kaznie_NL13th October 2008
  Thanks Pedja! Your jazz lessons give GMC a wider audience, that's great!
- Pedja Simovic13th October 2008
  QUOTE (Muris Varajic @ Oct 13 2008, 04:27 PM)
  Sounds nice,smooth playing.
  
  Thanks Muris , I love your odd rhythm lesson.
  
  QUOTE (zacg1 @ Oct 13 2008, 04:48 PM)
  Very nice lesson!!
  
  Thank you sir
  
  QUOTE (Vinod Saranga @ Oct 13 2008, 05:17 PM)
  Great Lesson Pedja
  I love the 0:28 -0:32 chords progression.
  
  Thanks Vinod
  Glad you love it , I love that part as well
  
  QUOTE (kaznie @ Oct 13 2008, 05:24 PM)
  Thanks Pedja! Your jazz lessons give GMC a wider audience, that's great!
  
  Hey kaznie thank you for that observation. I do my best , glad to see you guys appreciate my work . You welcome
- Gerardo Siere13th October 2008
  Fantastic lesson, we need more of this kind of lesson. I is very important in jazz that the melody reflects the harmonic changes behind them so it is very usefull to have several ways to aproach this, chord tones are so important, specially guide tones (3rds and 7nths), and also there is this stylistic thing, for melodies arpegios happens more often than step by step scales, and in harmonic progressions, the aproach to key changes is more subtle than in rock or fusion where you just jump where ever you want go go. Oftenly you can group several chords in relation of a target chord, so you can group all by using one scale with several "moving notes" (most of the time using the diatonic scale and altering it to match the chord tones will make the work) but if the articulations and aproach to chord tones and guide tones are not used I wont sound that jazzy. Also we must have in midn that in a 4/4 measure beats 1 and 3 are strong points for the harmonic time.
  This is inspiring Pedja, I promise for November a lesson in the Style of Stan Getz and a collab about it for further discussion.
- Dejan Farkas13th October 2008
  Nice and easy
- Hisham Al-Sanea13th October 2008
  good job Pedja.very good idea
- Pedja Simovic14th October 2008
  QUOTE (Gerardo Siere @ Oct 13 2008, 06:27 PM)
  Fantastic lesson, we need more of this kind of lesson. I is very important in jazz that the melody reflects the harmonic changes behind them so it is very usefull to have several ways to aproach this, chord tones are so important, specially guide tones (3rds and 7nths), and also there is this stylistic thing, for melodies arpegios happens more often than step by step scales, and in harmonic progressions, the aproach to key changes is more subtle than in rock or fusion where you just jump where ever you want go go. Oftenly you can group several chords in relation of a target chord, so you can group all by using one scale with several "moving notes" (most of the time using the diatonic scale and altering it to match the chord tones will make the work) but if the articulations and aproach to chord tones and guide tones are not used I wont sound that jazzy. Also we must have in midn that in a 4/4 measure beats 1 and 3 are strong points for the harmonic time.
  This is inspiring Pedja, I promise for November a lesson in the Style of Stan Getz and a collab about it for further discussion.
  
  Thank you Gerardo. I look forward to Stan Getz style lesson!
  
  QUOTE (Dejan Farkas @ Oct 13 2008, 09:22 PM)
  Nice and easy
  
  Yeah just the way we like it
  
  QUOTE (Hisham Al-Sanea @ Oct 13 2008, 10:58 PM)
  good job Pedja.very good idea
  
  Thank you Hisham appreciate it
- Gabriel Leopardi14th October 2008
  Nice solo and very interesting theory behind it!
  Good job Pedja.
- Pedja Simovic14th October 2008
  Thank you Gabriel
- Alex8715th October 2008
  Very nice lesson Pedja. Gives some nice various ideas of style to use the backing track for
- Pedja Simovic15th October 2008
  QUOTE (Alex87 @ Oct 15 2008, 03:23 PM)
  Very nice lesson Pedja. Gives some nice various ideas of style to use the backing track for
  
  Thank you Alex, that was the idea and also to apply important concept of chord tones and arpeggios.
- ItsMe16th October 2008
  Since we are working already on arps what about a hexatonics lesson. I know how the scales are constructed from triads and so on, but using them is so much differnt
- Pedja Simovic17th October 2008
  I will make sure to do at least couple of lessons for Hexatonics. I also replied to your topic on forums about that so check that out as well!
- Daniel Realpe17th May 2010
  very useful
- Pedja Simovic20th May 2010
  Thanks Daniel

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Lesson
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- Tags: Chord tone soloing, A minor, Arpeggios, Sweep picking, Voice leading, Repetition, Sequence, Modal harmony, Vibrato, Diminished, Major7, Minor7, Dominant7
Hello GMC! Welcome to my Jazz series in A minor. This lesson is part 3 of the series regarding Jazz and approach I use over this type of Jazz/Pop/Rock/Blues harmony.

The key of this piece is A minor, and around that A minor I use modal harmony. The scales used as a guide are A natural and harmonic minor. So here we have a modal type of harmony which we will discuss in future parts of this series. Part 1 lesson is melody in style of great Wes Montgomery, using octaves only to create warm and smooth sound. For more info about that check out related lessons section.

Part 2 lesson is soloing on a single string. If you have never approached your guitar with this idea of restricting your self to only one string, I strongly suggest you check out that lesson also in related lessons section.

Part 3 lesson is about soloing using Chord tones and Arpeggios only! There is no chromatic approach nor scale approach notes, just notes that belong to the chords.

Having said that check out the chords in this song:

A min = A C E (also known as C maj6)
A min/G = A C E G (also known as A min7)
A min/F# = A C E F# (also known as A min6 or F# min7b5)
F maj7 = F A C E ( also known as A min/F)
E 7#9 = E G# B D G( also known as Hendrix chord)
E min7b5 = E G Bb D (also known as G min6 or G min/E)
E dim7 = E G Bb Dd (also known as G , Bb and Dd dim 7 chords)
F maj9 = F A C (E) G or in order F G A C E (also known as A min7/F)
G 13 = G B D F E (no 9th or 11th tension in this one)
C maj9 = C E G B D (also known as E min7/C)
A 9 = A C# E G B (also known as C# min7b5/A)
D min = D F A (also known as F maj6)
D min/maj7 = D F A C# (also known as F aug/D)
F min/C = F Ab C but since C is in the bass you get C F Ab inversion of the chord
B min7b5 = B D F A (also known as D min6)
G# dim7 = G# B D F (also known as B, D and F dim7 or E7b9 without ROOT note)

Ok, now that we have listed all the chords of the song we can actually talk about what you can do with this information. The idea of this lesson is to solo with chord tones = any note that belongs to the chord above or to solo with arpeggios. The difference is that arpeggio has a specific order of notes while if you solo with only chord tones you can play any note in your order (see spoken video for more explanations and details).

Here are the graphs that represent all these arpeggios through out the whole guitar neck. Check them out, practice them slowly and let me know how this affects your playing.

In this lesson I tried to solo in style of early Jazz and Swing era players.

When you finish this lesson hopefully you would have captured and mastered some of the following techniques:

- Soloing using Arpeggios

- Chord tone soloing

- Rhythmic repetition

- Syncopated rhythm

- Straight rhythm

- Motive development

- Q & A type of phrasing

- Vibrato

- Economy picking

- Alternate picking

- Sweep picking

- Learn to brake down notes from the chord etc

Equipment I used for recording my sound was: Custom built guitar (G.Papazoglou) with Pod X3 live going directly to computer.

Hope you guys will have fun soloing with arpeggios and chord tones, and learn form this piece as much as possible. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments related to this lesson.

I look forward hearing from you all!

Pedja

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