The Secret To Exciting Solos
Chord melody soloing means harmonizing your single-note licks with compact 3- and 4-note chord substitutions on the upper strings. It’s a great way to add rhythmic momentum and harmonic color to your solos, and a classic strategy employed by Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, Duke Robillard and others to build momentum and excitement while improvising on the blues.
Â
In this workshop, you’ll learn how to find all the 7th, 9th, 13th and altered voicings you need in multiple positions on the neck, and plenty of strategies for folding them into your vocabulary. Every voicing will be taught as part of a specific twelve-bar example, so you can quickly understand how and why it works and immediately start making it part of your own blues soloing.
Â
Before the workshop is over you’ll know how to harmonize blues licks, how to riff through the jazz/blues changes, how to add chord hits and chord licks to your single-note soloing, and more.
A Three-Step Method to Transform Your Chord Progressions
Know The Chord Shapes
Learn the most essential four-string 7th, 9th and 13th voicings, turn them into altered chords, and move them up the neck.
Learn The Moves
Build a vocabulary of chord melody moves including common tone rhythms, blue note riffs, call-and-response hits and more.
Put It All Together
Work through a series of completely notated 12-bar exercises packed with swappable moves you can immediately add into your own soloing and comping.
The Missing Ingredient For Great Soloing
Chord riffs and harmonized licks are two of the best ways to build energy and excitement in your solos, but it can be challenging to figure out exactly what's happening when you hear those sounds going by. Also, you may have tried learning new chords in the past, but never gotten to the point where you knew quite what to do with them or how to make them an organic part of your own playing.
Â
Chord Melody Blues solves both of those problems. Every example we go over in the workshop will be applied directly to the twelve-bar blues form, and every chord shape and voicing will be put to use in the progression as soon as it’s introduced. At each step, I’ll explain how to play each chord, why it works in the progression and how to get the most melodic mileage out of each voicing we cover.
Â
We’ll start with some essential chord shapes on the top four strings, and a handful of rhythmic ideas that make even the simplest common-tone melodies sound good. Next, we’ll explore using simple half-step or chromatic motion to harmonize blues licks and turn them into riffs over a I-IV-V twelve-bar blues.
Â
After that, we’ll look at expanding our melodic ideas with altered chords and I-VI-ii-V turnarounds, then wrap things up by considering how to add these chord hits, riffs and chord substitutions back into your single-note blues soloing.
Â
The materials and techniques you learn in this class will add new depth to your blues vocabulary, expand your understanding of the fretboard and help you wrap your hands – and head – around those hard-to-find sounds you hear where blues and jazz meet.
HOW IT WORKS
Sign Up
Use the secure form below to sign up for and attend the live online workshop (or watch the replay later).
Take The Workshop
Learn how to add chord riffs, harmonized melodies and chord substitutions to the twelve-bar blues.
Transform Your Blues
Watch the replay for an entire year, organize your practice plan, and make chord melodies an integral part of your blues soloing.
How is this workshop different from previous Chord Substitution workshops?
Is this a fingerstyle guitar workshop?
Is this workshop part of the Fingerstyle Five membership?
Will there be more workshops in this series?
How much does it cost?
$79Â 06/29/24 CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS
VOICINGS, RIFFS AND HARMONIZED LICKS FOR 12-BAR BLUES & JAZZ/BLUES PROGRESSIONS
Â
Sign Up Now!
Get a year's access to Chord Melody Blues for $79.