Senorita Performance Notes and Lessons Part 2

I hope that all of you learned something new from Part 1. We primarily talked about how to figure out the chordal foundation to solo over and several scale choices for each basic chord type. I also put emphasis on the fact that you should not solo over a chord by running up and down scales. This approach will yield a very amateurish sound and will get very boring for the listener because it tends to sound sort of mechanical and predictable in nature. I recommend that you put lots of emphasis on soloing by use of chord tones and use the scales to sparingly fill in the notes between the chord tones in interesting ways. For example if your chord is a Cmaj7 (C, E, G, B) and your melody is E, B, G, C, you could add a chord tone between the G and B. You could try the A from the Ionian scale between the G and B. The A would be the 6th scale degree of the Ionian scale. So your new melody would be E, B, G, A, C. Now your line has both chord tones and scale tones which makes for a smooth sounding melody. In this lessons I want to expand upon the use of the chord tones since they are more important. In future lessons I'll get deeper into scale choices.

Diatonic Chord Tones - A Deeper Look

From the first lesson you know how to analyze each chord you solo over. So if you are soloing over an Emin7 chord ,which is often the case in rock, your chord tones are E, G, B, D. Therefore those are the chord tones you want to use to form your melody. If you played nothing but those 4 notes you'd be guaranteed to stay in key and would probably improvise a better solo than if you only played the aeolian scale (most common scale used in rock over an Emin or Emin7 ) over the chord. The reason for this is because the chord tones skip every other note which automatically makes your solo sound less predictable. On the other hand you will probably feel quite limited by only four notes instead of the 7 offered in the scale. So here is the solution! There are many different chords that you can play over the Emin7 chord. Just keep in mind that the Emin7 chord tones are the home base and must be revisited occasionally unless your point is to go way outside of the box (to create unusual harmonies with the chord, depends on the style of the music). First, the Emin7 in rock is often the vi chord (chord built on the 6th scale note from the major key center). If we put that vi chord in order with its other diatonic chords we'd get 6=Emin7, 7=F#min7b5, 1=Gmaj7, 2=Amin7, 3=Bmin7, 4=Cmaj7, 5=Ddom7. All those chords tones produced by those chords are now fair game when soloing. By this analysis we also learned that the key of the music with the Emin7 is Gmaj providing that all the other chords within the music are diatonic to one another.

Diatonic Chord Tone Substitution Applied

Now with this enormous wealth of information what do you do with it. One way to apply all these chord tone options is to emphasize a different diatonic chord every 4 beats. For example, during measure 1 play the Emin7 chord tones, during measure 2 play the Amin7 chord tones, during measure 3 play the Bmin chord tones and during measure 4 play the Emin7 chord tones again. Now you have created an interesting sub progression within the Emin7 chord. This sub progression will sound sort of strange at first but will yield a more outside of the box sound than if you simply stayed on the Emin7 chord tones.

Of course if your style is jazz you would be building the set of 7 chords from the dorian scale because that is the most common scale used to solo over a min7 in jazz. So build all the chords off an E dorian and you'll get your diatonic set with a key center of Dmajor. Then just apply the rules for the Gmajor diatonic set above.

Non-Diatonic Chord Tone Substitution

Now here is where it really gets interesting. Back to the Emin7 chord. In rock you'd primarily use an E aeolian scale to form your diatonic set of chords which gives us the key center of Gmajor. In jazz you'd use an E dorian scale which give you a key center of Dmajor. The following Chord Substitution can be used in either rock or jazz but are primarily found in jazz because of their jazzy sound therefore I'll use the E dorian/Dmajor that we discussed. Give these chord tones a shot over the Emin7 chord.

Min7 chord from the root (1), Min 7 chord from the 2, Min 7 chord from the 5, Min Maj 7 chord (E, G, B, Dsharp) from the root, Dim from the root, Maj7 from the flat7, and Maj7 from the flat3.

I don't have time to get into detail on why some of these unusual chords work over the Emin7 or any min7 for that matter so just play around with them and I'll talk more about this in a future lesson. Or just drop me a line with your questions. Also, there are just as many choices as I have revealed here on min7 chords for maj7 and dom7 chords. I will try to cover these in future lessons as well.



Good Luck,

Mike