LIVE FROM FLAT V by Josh Smith
SOLO EXPANSIONS, PART 1.
Over the next few columns, Josh Smith will demonstrate three distinct approaches he likes to take to expand his soloing vocabulary within the blues form: chromaticism, diminished/augmented chords, and ii - V - I (two-five-one) turnarounds. These are some specific devices he uses to build musical bridges between chords while moving through a blues chord progression.
SOLO EXPANSIONS, PART 1.
Over the next few columns, Josh Smith will demonstrate three distinct approaches he likes to take to expand his soloing vocabulary within the blues form: chromaticism, diminished/augmented chords, and ii - V - I (two-five-one) turnarounds. These are some specific devices he uses to build musical bridges between chords while moving through a blues chord progression.
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MusicTranscript
00:00All right, Josh Smith here again for Guitar World Magazine.
00:10Over the next few months, we're going to talk a little bit about the way
00:13that I solo and the three approaches that I've
00:16found useful to expanding my vocabulary within the blues.
00:20That would be chromaticism, diminished and augmented chords,
00:24and 2-5-1 turnarounds.
00:25These are the things that I use to build bridges
00:28between chords, which to me is the difference between just playing
00:32pentatonic blues and playing notes that work over the chords
00:35and playing through the changes.
00:37When you connect each chord together, you're
00:39really playing through the chords.
00:41And I'm using those three bridges, chromaticism,
00:44diminished and augmented chords, and 2-5-1 turnarounds
00:48to create those bridges.
00:49So we're going to start with chromaticism.
00:52All right, so to start off, I'm going to play
00:54a chorus of a blues in the key of A, a shuffle.
00:58And I'm going to chromatically link together rhythm chords
01:01so that you can hear the way that I start
01:03to hear these bridges in between chords.
01:05So it's going to be a very specific, simple 12-bar blues in A
01:09with chromatic chords in between each change.
01:12Here we go.
01:141, 2, 3, 4.
01:151, 2, 3, 4.
01:171, 2, 3, 4.
01:191, 2, 3, 4.
01:211, 2, 3, 4.
01:231, 2, 3, 4.
01:251, 2, 3, 4.
01:271, 2, 3, 4.
01:291, 2, 3, 4.
01:311, 2, 3, 4.
01:331, 2, 3, 4.
01:351, 2, 3, 4.
01:371, 2, 3, 4.
01:41OK, so you can hear that I chromatically link together
01:45every chord, whether it be coming down from a half step
01:49above, coming up from a half step below,
01:52maybe from a full step and using two chords to create motion.
01:56So I'm playing things like A9 and then E flat 7
02:03to lead me to D7.
02:05And then maybe I'll play G flat 9, I mean, G sharp 9, A flat 9
02:09to lead me back to A9.
02:11Things like that.
02:13When you start to hear those chords in between the chords,
02:16you will naturally start to want to play
02:18that stuff within your soloing.
02:19So it's a great, great exercise to play rhythm guitar like that
02:25and start adding in as much chromatic motion as you can,
02:27because your ear will start becoming
02:29trained to hearing that when you're soloing.
02:31All right, so how do you start applying this to your solos?
02:36Let's take the first move within a 12-bar blues, the 1
02:39to the 4, right?
02:40Everybody is familiar with this move.
02:42We're going to go from A7 or A9, A dominant, to D7.
02:49And I did that by playing E flat 7 to lead me to D7.
02:55How would you spell that out?
02:56Well, how many of you have ever played this in a slow blues?
03:05Probably many of you.
03:06Well, how would you play that in a solo, in a shuffle?
03:09I'd play this.
03:18OK, so what did I do right there?
03:20I very simply spelled out that D flat, I mean E flat 7,
03:27and resolved back to A or to the third of D.
03:38So again, I'm just thinking about connecting the one
03:41chord to the next with that chromatic move, the same way
03:44I did in the rhythm guitar.
03:46I'm going to do it in my solos.
03:47And you can do this all over the place.
03:51So let's now move back from the 4 to the 1,
03:55the next change in the blues.
03:56So here we are playing D7 and going back to A
04:03by playing A flat.
04:06Well, how would you think about that?
04:07There's a lot of things you can do.
04:09I might end up down here.
04:18It might just be as simple as one note.
04:24So I might go from the 4 and play something
04:28like that, which you would hear many bebop guitar players play.
04:31But really, all you're doing there
04:33is highlighting that A flat and playing that.
04:38So that's, you know, again, when you start hearing this stuff
04:49as it goes by, you kind of can't help yourself.
04:53Once you've learned to play it rhythmically
04:55and you start hearing all those little movements between chords,
04:58it's going to come out automatically
05:00in your lead playing.
05:02So let's finish out the progression.
05:04We're on the 5 chord, which is E7.
05:08So I might play something like this.
05:12So there I'm playing chromatically both up and down
05:15by going up to the 3rd of D and then down to the dominant 7
05:22and then playing an E chord.
05:23And then I'd do the same maybe on D.
05:28And then I'd walk back up to G. I mean, to A from G.
05:33So maybe something like that.
05:43There's so many options.
05:44But again, I'm not playing anything fancy there.
05:47Not thinking about scales.
05:48I'm not thinking about chord tones.
05:50I'm literally just chromatically connecting the 1 to the 4,
05:53the 4 to the 1, the 5 to the 4, and the 4 back to the 1.
05:57The chords that you already know.
05:58When you start thinking about building bridges
06:00between those chords grammatically, again,
06:03all that vocabulary just starts to lay itself out for you.