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.
01:41OK.
01:42So you can hear that I chromatically link together every chord, whether it be coming
01:47down from a half step above, coming up from a half step below, maybe from a full step
01:54and using two chords to create motion.
01:56So I'm playing things like A9 and then Eb7 to lead me to D7, and then maybe I'll play
02:06Gb9, I mean G sharp 9, Ab9 to lead me back to A9, things like that.
02:13When you start to hear those chords in between the chords, you will naturally start to want
02:18to play that stuff within your soloing.
02:20So it's a great, great exercise to play rhythm guitar like that and start adding in as much
02:26chromatic motion as you can because your ear will start becoming trained to hearing that
02:30when 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 one to the four, right?
02:41Everybody is familiar with this move.
02:42We're going to go from A7 or A9, A dominant, to D7, and I did that by playing Eb7 to lead
02:53me to D7.
02:54How would you spell that out?
02:56Well, how many of you have ever played this in a slow blues?
03:06Probably many of you.
03:07Well, how would you play that in a solo, in a shuffle?
03:09I'd play this.
03:12Okay, so what did I do right there?
03:20I very simply spelled out that Db, I mean Eb7 and resolved back to A or to the third
03:31of D. So again, I'm just thinking about connecting the one chord to the next with that chromatic
03:43move.
03:44The same way I did in the rhythm guitar, I'm going to do it in my solos, and you can do
03:47this all over the place.
03:51So let's now move back from the four to the one, the next change in the blues.
03:56So here we are playing D7 and going back to A by playing Ab.
04:06Well how would you think about that?
04:07There's a lot of things you can do.
04:08I might end up down here.
04:18It might just be as simple as one note.
04:24So I might go from the four and play something like that, which you would hear many bebop
04:30guitar players play.
04:31But really all you're doing there is highlighting that Ab and playing that.
04:38So that's, you know, again, when you start hearing this stuff as it goes by, you kind
04:52of can't help yourself.
04:53Once you've learned to play it rhythmically and you start hearing all those little movements
04:57between chords, it's going to come out automatically in your lead playing.
05:02So let's finish out the progression.
05:04We're on the five 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 and
05:18down to the dominant seven and then playing an E chord.
05:24And then I'd do the same maybe on D. And 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, but again, I'm not playing anything fancy there, not thinking
05:47about scales, I'm not thinking about chord tones.
05:50I'm literally just chromatically connecting the one to the four, the four to the one,
05:55the five to the four, and the four back to the one.
05:57The chords that you already know.
05:58When you start thinking about building bridges between those chords chromatically, again,
06:03all that vocabulary just starts to lay itself out for you.