need some understanding please!!

[mlgsolidsnake]

Hi everyone, im a long time visitor first time poster.

well a little about my playing to get you filled in before i ask my question.

i play a 6 string yamaha trb and i've been playing for 2 solid years

im self taught on every instrument that i play.. and with the advance of youtube ive corrected some of the bad habits i had through the videos on youtube,

now i very little knowledge of theory musically.

so dont flame me or anything,

but heres my question and if i could get a straight forward answer that be great..

and btw im sorry if i havent searched hard enough on the site i just dont really know how to input my question into the search engine,

well this is what im wondering,

if im going to decide to solo over a chord progression which for instance goes like this: Dmaj F#m em a7 dmaj, obviously the key is dmaj so would i play a dmaj scale over that progression or would i play individual scales over each chord change such as dmaj(dmaj scale) f#m (F#min Scale) etc..

please if someone can give me some insight i would be very glad, ive been wondering this for awhile.. and also if it applys to all chord progressions not just the one above. thanks!

[Billnc]

Originally Posted by mlgsolidsnake

Hi everyone, im a long time visitor first time poster.

well a little about my playing to get you filled in before i ask my question.

i play a 6 string yamaha trb and i've been playing for 2 solid years

im self taught on every instrument that i play.. and with the advance of youtube ive corrected some of the bad habits i had through the videos on youtube,

now i very little knowledge of theory musically.

so dont flame me or anything,

but heres my question and if i could get a straight forward answer that be great..

and btw im sorry if i havent searched hard enough on the site i just dont really know how to input my question into the search engine,

well this is what im wondering,

if im going to decide to solo over a chord progression which for instance goes like this: Dmaj F#m em a7 dmaj, obviously the key is dmaj so would i play a dmaj scale over that progression or would i play individual scales over each chord change such as dmaj(dmaj scale) f#m (F#min Scale) etc..

please if someone can give me some insight i would be very glad, ive been wondering this for awhile.. and also if it applys to all chord progressions not just the one above. thanks!

You are soloing over a CHORD progression, think chords, to start you have three or four notes that are chord tones, you can approach these by ways OTHER than scale notes. Just running the D major scale and its modes results in garbage. There are other possibilities, particularly over the 7th chord that modes ignore, that are musically important and not that hard to understand.

I had the opportunity to play with a guitar player yesterday who handed me a chart. It said simply, for the solo section D modal. Guess what? It had nothing to do with 'modes' per se. The chord was D. He back cycled and threw in all the chords and substitutions imaginable (a finite number!) on his solos. There were other bass players in the audtions that in most circumstances could whoop my butt, I was the only one to follow the guitar player and got the job.
Having said that I'm not sure how often I was right! But I wasn't just running up and down a D major scale.

[Blacke]

My friend Pepper would write a twelve tone series to solo over it, starting in retrograde inversion.

[Funkturnal]

+1 to what Billnc said.

Yes, that chord progression is in D major, but simply running the D major scale (randomly) wouldn't result in meaningful lines. IMO, thinking "modally" about this progression isn't the best way to look at it either. (For example, you could think D Ionian, F# Phrygian, E Dorian, A Mixolydian... but IMO, that is too "boxed in". I think it's good to know the modes and apply them as one set of tools, but I don't think it should be the emphasis.)

As mentioned, think chordally, as it is the chord tones in the progression which contain the important harmonic information. This doesn't mean only playing the arpeggios. But generally speaking, the strong phrases contain chord tones on beats 1 and 3. As an example, you can use chromatic pickups that begin on the & of 4, which lead to a chord tone on 1 etc.

Another example of something that might sound good is during the Emin7//// A7//// part of the progression, you could think "GMaj7//// F#m7b5////", which is basically the arpeggios that start on the 3rd of Emin7 and A7 respectively. For example, you can play a line (8th notes) that goes like -

Over the Emin7 chord:
G,B,D,F#,E,D,B,C

Over the A7 chord:
C#,E,G,B,A,G,E,F (and lead into the F# for the DMaj7 chord)

Or you can alter some notes on the A7 (dominant chords have a lot of flexibility) and play a line like:
C#,E,G,A,C,Bb,A,G (leading into F# for the DMaj7 chord)

Anyway, just an example of a chordal idea that doesn't start on the root, which contains some scale tones and chromatic notes. But notice that the strong beats are mainly chord tones (if not all chord tones), and usually the chromatics or the scale tones are on the weak beats (the &'s of the beat). Scale tones can also be looked at as extensions of the chord, in which case the notes are functioning like a chord tone.

Anyway, try to play it, and see if it makes sense to your ears!

[klawz]

or forget about theory and play what feels and sounds good to you... let out whats inside

[Chris K]

Originally Posted by mlgsolidsnake

if im going to decide to solo over a chord progression which for instance goes like this: Dmaj F#m em a7 dmaj, obviously the key is dmaj so would i play a dmaj scale over that progression or would i play individual scales over each chord change such as dmaj(dmaj scale) f#m (F#min Scale) etc..

In most cases, the 'material' to build a solo on is provided by the melody of the song. The melody is likely to move within a certain scale.

If you would like to take it a step further, look at the way the melody is harmonized. Other voices move along with the melody, forming chords, and you might also find ideas for your solo there.

My personal preference is a combination of these two, where diving into the harmonies works as a means to intensify the solo.

Some people construct solo's by applying certain scales to certain chords. To this last resort I would only flee in cases where your creativity is completely gone.

[mlgsolidsnake]

All this information is so wonderful I'm glad I posted thanks to everyone but I'm still kinda lost guys like I said I don't really understand most of the theory talk but I'm trying to understand as much as I can, I mean I can probably sit at home and doodle over that progression but I want to understand what I'm doing and not just hear it, because playing live is different there's no time for mistakes and I can't just doodle without hitting wrong notes and stuff, if I were to search for more in depth information what would the subject be that I
searching excatly since scales and modes aren't what's the emphesis right now? Or maybe so more broken down examples

[MalcolmAmos]

Think of this - you've got a cord progression how much time do you have with each chord. I find that playing a complete scale over each chord change just does not work out. So forget about that. What does have merit is playing the tonic scale over the entire progression, however, if you play it in scale order it will sound like a scale exercise and nothing like melody - which is what you are shooting for. Now how to get to melody ......

Your melody line and the chord line should share some notes - if they do both lines harmonize each other - and you want that to happen. So..... makes since to develop your melody from the chord's notes (tones). http://www.smithfowler.org/music/Chord_Formulas.htm I wish someone would have told me that when I first started out. Would have saved me a lot of time and effort. As you have time check some of these papers; http://www.bing.com/search?q=harmoni...SOLTLB&PC=SUN1

Now to do that you are going to have to understand what notes are in each chord you are playing over -- and then develop melodic phrases from those notes. The following video speaks about using two close notes followed with a leap of at least a 3rd - that gives you a pretty good melodic phrase and introduces pauses into your melody. The melody should have breathing room. A string of notes is just noise. Think phrases.

Start looking into some theory and take what you learn into noodling. Noodling will become melody sooner or later. I picked up a lot of good ideas from this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0iZ1j00wSU Copy the text that comes on the screen as he is playing.

One other hint. An established song - one already written - will have one melody note for each lyric word. Understand words with more than one syllable, like Ma-ry and lit-tle, take two notes -- so draw your notes from the chord used under that word. Sing the song and find melody notes that sound good and flow with the lyrics. Yes it's that simple. Noodle around see where it takes you.

Pull up some sheet music and see how the melody and the notes of the chord share space. That should give you some ideas. Here is an example of how this happens:

Melody notes
B.........C...B......A..G....D......B......C...E.. ...E
Heartache number one was when you left me
A G chord harmonizes the first five words as a G chord is made of the G-B-D notes - notice they are not in chord or scale order. That C and A note are passing notes - sound good notes - the second syllable in a lyric word. Now when we get to the word "you" the C chord (C_E_G) takes over and harmonizes the last three words. That in a nut shell is what you are trying to do.

Good luck.

[Billnc]

You're only talking three chords. Try this, play the arpeggios. Play the scales. Now improvise using only the chord tones. Next use only the chords, leading from half step above, again just improvise slowly over the changes. The next is trickier, use only the scale step above the chord tones to chord tones themselves. Next use enclosure, scale step above, 1/2 step below then the chord tone.

A few days on each concept will open up the fingerboard for you. You can always go from chord tone to chord tone, mix up the approaches and you can alway add chromatic notes from chord tone to chord tone.

Scales are easy enough to where you will use scaler ideas tastefully if you can do the other stuff.

I've never found doing this stuff to squash creativiy, but give me more stuff on my artists palette.

There actually is very little theory in this post, just things to do.

Blacke's friend Pepper probably would sound pretty cool.

Jim Hall utilizes some of MalcomAmos' ideas.

[Chris K]

Originally Posted by MalcolmAmos

Start looking into some theory and take what you learn into noodling. Noodling will become melody sooner or later.

Good point, Malcolm.
And the opposite is also true: noodle around a bit, make discoveries of nice lines, all by ear, and after that, try to dig into some theory to learn why these lines work.

Some knowlegde of harmonic functions would help a lot.