Josh Smith - Using Chromatic Approaches To Expand Your Blues Soloing Vocabulary
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
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 All right, Josh Smith here again for Guitar World magazine.
00:10 Over the next few months, we're going to talk a little bit about the way
00:13 that I solo and the three approaches that I've
00:16 found useful to expanding my vocabulary within the blues.
00:20 That would be chromaticism, diminished and augmented chords,
00:23 and 2-5-1 turnarounds.
00:25 These are the things that I use to build bridges between chords, which
00:29 to me is the difference between just playing pentatonic blues
00:33 and playing notes that work over the chords
00:35 and playing through the changes.
00:37 When you connect each chord together, you're
00:39 really playing through the chords.
00:41 And I'm using those three bridges, chromaticism,
00:44 diminished and augmented chords, and 2-5-1 turnarounds
00:47 to create those bridges.
00:49 So we're going to start with chromaticism.
00:52 All right, so to start off, I'm going to play
00:54 a chorus of a blues in the key of A, a shuffle.
00:57 And I'm going to chromatically link together rhythm chords
01:01 so that you can hear the way that I start
01:03 to hear these bridges in between chords.
01:05 So it's going to be a very specific, simple 12-bar blues in A
01:08 with chromatic chords in between each change.
01:12 Here we go.
01:13 1, 2, 3, 4.
01:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:18 [PLAYING CHORDS]
01:22 OK, so you can hear that I chromatically
01:44 link together every chord, whether it
01:46 be coming down from a half step above,
01:49 coming up from a half step below, maybe from a full step
01:54 and using two chords to create motion.
01:56 So I'm playing things like A9 and then E flat 7
02:03 to lead me to D7.
02:05 And then maybe I'll play G flat--
02:07 I mean, G sharp 9, A flat 9 to lead me back to A9,
02:11 things like that.
02:12 When you start to hear those chords in between the chords,
02:16 you will naturally start to want to play
02:18 that stuff within your soloing.
02:19 So it's a great, great exercise to play rhythm guitar like that
02:24 and start adding in as much chromatic motion as you can,
02:27 because your ear will start becoming
02:29 trained to hearing that when you're soloing.
02:31 All right, so how do you start applying this to your solos?
02:35 Let's take the first move within a 12-bar blues, the 1 to the 4,
02:39 right?
02:40 Everybody is familiar with this move.
02:42 We're going to go from A7 or A9, A dominant, to D7.
02:49 And I did that by playing E flat 7 to lead me to D7.
02:55 How would you spell that out?
02:56 Well, how many of you have ever played this in a slow blues?
02:58 Probably many of you.
03:06 Well, how would you play that in a solo, in a shuffle?
03:08 I'd play this.
03:09 [PLAYING MUSIC]
03:13 OK, so what did I do right there?
03:19 I very simply spelled out that D flat--
03:23 I mean, E flat 7--
03:24 [PLAYING MUSIC]
03:26 --and resolved back to A or to the third of D.
03:31 [PLAYING MUSIC]
03:37 So again, I'm just thinking about connecting the one chord to the next
03:42 with that chromatic move, the same way I did in the rhythm guitar.
03:45 I'm going to do it in my solos.
03:47 And you can do this all over the place.
03:51 So let's now move back from the 4 to the 1, the next change in the blues.
03:56 So here we are playing D7 and going back to A by playing A flat.
04:05 Well, how would you think about that?
04:07 There's a lot of things you can do.
04:08 I might end up down here.
04:10 [PLAYING MUSIC]
04:13 It might just be as simple as one note.
04:20 [PLAYING MUSIC]
04:24 So I might go from the 4--
04:25 [PLAYING MUSIC]
04:27 --and play something like that, which you would hear many bebop guitar players
04:31 play.
04:31 But really, all you're doing there is highlighting that A flat--
04:34 [PLAYING MUSIC]
04:36 --and playing that.
04:38 So--
04:38 [PLAYING MUSIC]
04:41 That's--
04:44 [PLAYING MUSIC]
04:47 Again, when you start hearing this stuff as it goes by,
04:51 you kind of can't help yourself.
04:52 Once you've learned to play it rhythmically
04:55 and you start hearing all those little movements between chords,
04:58 it's going to come out automatically in your lead playing.
05:02 So let's finish out the progression.
05:04 We're on the 5 chord, which is E7.
05:08 So I might play something like this.
05:09 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:12 So there I'm playing chromatically both up and down
05:15 by going up to the 3rd of D--
05:16 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:18 --and then down to the dominant 7--
05:20 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:22 --and then playing an E chord.
05:23 And then I'd do the same maybe on D.
05:25 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:28 And then I'd walk back up to G--
05:30 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:31 --I mean to A--
05:31 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:32 --from G. So maybe something--
05:34 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:36 --like that.
05:37 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:39 [PLAYING MUSIC]
05:43 There's so many options.
05:44 But again, I'm not playing anything fancy there.
05:46 I'm not thinking about scales.
05:48 I'm not thinking about chord tones.
05:50 I'm literally just chromatically connecting the 1 to the 4,
05:53 the 4 to the 1, the 5 to the 4, and the 4 back to the 1.
05:56 The chords that you already know, when
05:58 you start thinking about building bridges between those chords
06:01 grammatically, again, all that vocabulary just
06:04 starts to lay itself out for you.
06:06 [MUSIC PLAYING]
06:09 (upbeat music)
06:12 [BLANK_AUDIO]