What makes a good solo? Sometimes its all about who is backing you up. I suppose they call it "comping" in jazz. I know a lot of folks are beginners and its all about scale practice, left/right-hand technique, chromatic exercises, picking exercises, ect. My question is how many hours do you guys devote to chord practice and study? I've gained a phenomenal interest of late in rhythm and what it can do for you musically. Really my goal here is to be a musician first and a guitarist second. I want to speak in a musical language that can relate easily to a pianist or a saxophonist.

I've been looking at Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead lately, and what he talks about in terms of playing rhythms. He said he listened to a lot of jazz, and tried to emulate what pianists did for Coltrane in terms of backing him up. He wanted to do the same for Garcia, so he got to work. He plays a lot of different chord voicings and inversions, and I'm starting to go down that route. I'm currently working out of a jazz rhythm book by Mel Bay and one of good things about this book is it teaches you chords starting out Major, then minor, 7ths, 9ths, and so on, but shows you movable patterns and their inversions, with at least one voicing to start out, a 3rd in the bass (1st inversion), then 5th in the bass (2nd inversion) and goes from there.

Sorry for the wordy post, not expecting many bites, just a bit bored. Cheers!

Some thing i've allways struggled with, basic chords i'm fine, i've wrote out my own chord diagrams. but have trouble memorizing them. you wanna look into jazz standards. 12 chord studies, drop 2, drop 3, chords its is a massive subject.

Lately I've been looking at how Dave Matthews plays, and good god, he plays some monster voicings. I know a lot of people think its cool to hate on Dave Matthews, and I suppose I can take most things in stride since music subjective, but listening to the first few albums again after a long break, the guitar work on there is complex. The reason being he composed his songs to include the entire arrangement of the band, not just writing "guitar" parts, and this makes a lot of sense when looking at the chords he chooses to play. He stated that whether you played the song solo, or with the entire band, the song would be unmistakably the same song.

As far as Jazz goes I'm looking into Charlie Parker's Now's The Time and also Billy's Bounce.

Chords and rhythms are definitely an important/massive subject! Personally, I try to find time to analyze chord progressions...and find new ways to voice the chords within it to activate different 'leading' between them.

I don't know how you like to practice, but analyzing the chords and cadences inside of a chord progression is both fun and rewarding for me. I write out the chords, spell them out, and find ways to interpret their relationship to each other. I then try to voice the chords with different inversions, or try to play the whole progression using only triads...all the while trying to 'push' small melodic ideas through the chords..if that makes sense?

I have embedded a quick video of a sample chord progression that I have enjoyed experimenting with and studying...Im not sure if this is quite the topic that you're after, but maybe it will offer some insights to you as a 'musician' first, and 'guitarist' second. If I am totally off base, then I do apologize!!

Here is the outline of the chords:

Bar1: A7 || Bar2: C#7 || Bar3: F#min7 || Bar4: Emin (2beats) A7 (2 beats) || Bar5: Dmaj7 || Bar6: Dmin7 || Bar7: A7 ||

Bar8: F#7+5 (2 beats) F#7 (2 beats) || Bar9: Bmin7 || Bar10: E9 || Bar11: A7 (2 beats) Bb Dim (2 beats) ||

Bar 12: Bmin7 (2 beats) E7 (2beats) ||

Awesome video! This is definitely what I was looking for, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. I gotta get away from the TV screen and really double down on this stuff. Thanks for the advice.

I understand if it's a little daunting to look at so many chords...maybe I was a bit overzealous with my post. But I just find the sequence very good to break into sections for studying...

If it's useful, and of interest to people here, maybe this would be a good thread to break down chord progressions and discuss chord relationships.

We could start by looking at the first three chords in my progression above....(A7---> C#7---> F#min7), or can toss mine aside to look at smaller 3 or 4 chord progressions that you may have struggled with in the past??

I am just not sure how comfortable everyone is with this topic. BUT, I know I LOVE to grapple with how to interpret chords, so I would be amped on having chord sequence discussions.

At any rate, happy playing everyone.

Quote: aethermachine wrote in post #3

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Lately I've been looking at how Dave Matthews plays, and good god, he plays some monster voicings. I know a lot of people think its cool to hate on Dave Matthews, and I suppose I can take most things in stride since music subjective, but listening to the first few albums again after a long break, the guitar work on there is complex. The reason being he composed his songs to include the entire arrangement of the band, not just writing "guitar" parts, and this makes a lot of sense when looking at the chords he chooses to play. He stated that whether you played the song solo, or with the entire band, the song would be unmistakably the same song.

As far as Jazz goes I'm looking into Charlie Parker's Now's The Time and also Billy's Bounce.

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Will's Chords -

Hey man!

Glad that you liked the progression so much! I can't take credit for it though....I found it on youtube somewhere a while back and have just kept it around for studying. The movement inside of it really offers a lot when you look into it.

As for my 'fretboard technique', that is probably more of a bad habit on my end that I should try to keep myself aware of. I feel I do it too much, so I appreciate you pointing it out.

Great job working with the chord extensions though! I will play your chords also! I find experimenting with extensions really helps me to UNDERSTAND the chord progression and gets me looking deeper into how the chords relate to each other. Also, kudos on practicing some scales/melody APPLICATION in between the chords!

Speaking of your 'relative scales', I am curious to ask: how are you thinking about the chords when you go to play a melody line? To keep question focused, what kind of approache(s) would you take to playing over the first three chords (A7---C#7---F#min7)??

Hey Will,
Thanks for the comments and questions! I think the progression is a 1625??? To answer the question in the last paragraph, I think of the licks triadicly. We play scales for dexterity over and over. We've memorized them and our ear has been tuned to the degrees of the scale but, there comes a time when we need to think of the scales triadicly. For the A7, the lick I played consisted of the degrees in order, b7, 1, b3, 1, b7, 1. The triad of a 7th chord is 1, b3, b7. This is my thinking now, it may be flawed somehow. If so, I hope someone will chime in.

That's some tight playing Will, I will definitely look out for more vids by you. Triads have definitely opened up some things for me, I've been focusing way to much on these giant chords with odd voicings that I forget to start small. I'm working through "Freewill" by Rush at the moment, the speed and constant time changes are bit tricky but I'm slowing it down and picking it up fairly well. I think its related to our topic, because I think Alex Lifeson is an amazingly well rounded guitarists in his ability to lay down both backing rhythms and lead, though I suppose you have to if you are in a power trio. His use of triads and a couple of inversions in the above mentioned song are definitely a good work out for me at the moment. I was also glad to notice right off the bat he uses a descending F lydian run to start off the jam. I knew there was a reason for practicing modes!

Hey Man!

Sorry for the slow reply. Work has been KILLING me the past couple weeks barely giving me the time to fit in my daily practice...SO NOT COOL!!!

Anyway, I can totally agree with your approach of thinking in 'triads'. Triads are the salt on the steak if you will, and really get to the heart of the harmonic movement between chords. The options that become available are overwhelming when you start playing inversions, or even subbing an interval for a 'non-chord tone' interval. For example subbing your "1, 3, 5" C TRIAD (C-E-G), for a "b7, 5, 1" (Bb - G - C) in place of the same C chord...

In regard to your comment of the triad of a 7th chord....1, b3, b7 speaks stronger to a MINOR 7th chord (because of the b3). However, seeing as the progression is sort of a Bluesy thing, using the b3 is a totally acceptable approach. I would like to suggest though, that you try creating ambiguity between the 'b3' and the 'maj3' interval.

To do this, you could play your same sort of approach, but when you land on the b3 slide it up a semi-tone, and then continue your lick.

NOW what you have is the triad "1-b3-b7" AND the triad "1-3-b7" applicable to the same chord (A7 in this case). So why not try interchanging them?

Any thoughts? opinions? If you would like a video, I would be happy to.


PS!

Adam - Stoked to catch your vid on this stuff. What you are saying as a 'lead player' makes a TON of sense but will enjoy seeing it played out in real time.

Aether - Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you have found a tune that gets your gears working, and that you are noticing benefits from working out triads. Triads are indeed smaller voicings, but I guess you could describe it as one of those 'less is so much more' approaches.

So glad people are into this topic!

Hey Will,
I played the progression twice, so I should have played it differently each time. I'm going to work on these things you have mentioned and see if I can change it up on the fly. THANKS!

PRACTICE TILL' YOU PUKE!

Goodluck Heyman! I am really only referring to the spot where you play a 'lick' after hitting the A7 chord (in case there is any confusion).

I hope the idea makes sense and that it works for you! If it's still a bit unclear, I would be happy to post a video...just let me know!

GODSPEED!!

Will.

I understand.

You could post a video of a different approach or lay down a different progression man. It's all good.

I wish more people would post videos.

Either way, thanks for the time you've given here.

All the best.

@Heyman, great playing, I sure wish I started playing as early as you have. You seem to have an amazing grasp of theory, I hope you post more often because from reading your posts so far I have learned a thing a two, and definitely picked up a few things I otherwise would have overlooked.

Again I'm turning to Rush for more and more songs with rhythmic intention. I've wanted to start a Rush thread but I fear there wouldn't be much interest in it. The more I listen to their albums the more appreciation I have for what they've accomplished over the years, and from a technical standpoint it is simply incredible that its only three guys that are pumping out so much sound. I had to watch several live videos of Alex playing Limelight to really get the progression down correctly, as the tabs aren't 100% accurate, but piecing together 2 or 3 versions of the tab and watching Alex play it I've learned how to practice the progression and solo correctly, and after breaking it down I realized this is much harder to play correctly than Alex makes it sound on the record, at least for me anyways. Troy Stetina has written some great articles about the music theory behind their compositions and I've found it very useful for figuring Alex's mode of thought in writing the composition.

Hi aethermachine,
Good thread. I'm glad it helped.
Because of my age, I haven't heard a lot of the music that the rest of the people here have heard. It's a challenge some times. Thanks for the kind words.

Hello again, I can't seem to leave this thread alone!

Here are some chords given to me that I enjoy for major modal scale work.

//Gmin7//Abmaj7//Amin7//Bbmaj7//D7//Gmaj7//Fsusb9//

Fsusb9 fingering:
Bar first fret

E A D G B e
1 3 4 3 1 1

All the best.