Josh Smith - Using Chromatic Approaches To Expand Your Blues Soloing Vocabulary - video Dailymotion

Guitar World

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.

Transcript

00:00All right, Josh Smith here again for Guitar World Magazine. Over the next few months we're

00:12going to talk a little bit about the way that I solo and the three approaches that I've found

00:17useful to expanding my vocabulary within the blues. That would be chromaticism, diminished

00:22and augmented chords, and 2-5-1 turnarounds. These are the things that I use to build bridges between

00:29chords, which to me is the difference between just playing pentatonic blues and playing notes that

00:34work over the chords and playing through the changes. When you connect each chord together

00:39you're really playing through the chords and I'm using those three bridges, chromaticism,

00:44diminished and augmented chords, and 2-5-1 turnarounds to create those bridges. So we're

00:49going to start with chromaticism. All right, so to start off I'm going to play a chorus of a blues in

00:55the key of A, a shuffle, and I'm going to chromatically link together rhythm chords so that you can hear

01:02the way that I start to hear these bridges in between chords. So it's going to be a very specific

01:06simple 12-bar blues in A with chromatic chords in between each change. Here we go. One, two, three, four...

01:22Okay, so you can hear that I chromatically link together every chord, whether it be coming down

01:47from a half step above, coming up from a half step below, maybe from a full step and using two chords

01:55to create motion. So I'm playing things like A9 and then E flat 7 to lead me to D7, and then maybe I'll

02:05play G flat, I mean G sharp 9, A flat 9 to lead me back to A9, things like that. When you start to hear

02:13those chords in between the chords, you will naturally start to want to play that stuff within your soloing.

02:19So it's a great, great exercise to play rhythm guitar like that and start adding in as much chromatic

02:26motion as you can because your ear will start becoming trained to hearing that when you're soloing.

02:31All right, so how do you start applying this to your solos? Let's take the first move within a 12-bar blues,

02:38the one to the four, right? Everybody is familiar with this move. We're going to go from A7 or A9, A dominant,

02:48to D7, and I did that by playing E flat 7 to lead me to D7. How would you spell that out?

02:56Well, how many of you have ever played this in a slow blues?

02:59Probably many of you. Well, how would you play that in a solo, in a shuffle? I'd play this.

03:18Okay, so what did I do right there? I very simply spelled out that D flat, I mean E flat 7,

03:24and resolved back to A or to the third of D.

03:37So again, I'm just thinking about connecting the one chord to the next with that chromatic move. The

03:43same way I did in the rhythm guitar, I'm going to do it in my solos and you can do this all over the

03:49place. So let's now move back from the four to the one, the next change in the blues. So here we are

03:58playing D7 and going back to A by playing A flat. Well, how would you think about that? There's a lot

04:07of things you can do. I might end up down here. It might just be as simple as one note.

04:24So I might go from the four

04:27and play something like that, which you would hear many bebop guitar players play,

04:31but really all you're doing there is highlighting that A flat and playing that. So that's,

04:47you know, again, when you start hearing this stuff as it goes by,

04:51you kind of can't help yourself. Once you've learned to play it rhythmically and you start hearing all

04:56those little movements between chords, it's going to come out automatically in your lead playing.

05:02So let's finish out the progression. We're on the V chord, which is E7.

05:08So I might play something like this.

05:12So there I'm playing chromatically both up and down by going up to the third of D

05:18and then down to the dominant seven

05:20and then playing an E chord. And 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. So maybe something like that.

05:43There's so many options, but again, I'm not playing anything fancy there. I'm not thinking about scales.

05:48I'm not thinking about chord tones. I'm literally just chromatically connecting the one to the four,

05:53the four to the one, the five to the four, and the four back to the one. The chords that you already know.

05:58When you start thinking about building bridges between those chords chromatically,

06:02again, all that vocabulary just starts to lay itself out for you.

Josh Smith - Using Chromatic Approaches To Expand Your Blues Soloing Vocabulary

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended