Josh Smith - Using Chromatic Approaches To Expand Your Blues Soloing Vocabulary - video Dailymotion

Guitar World

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.

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 All right, Josh Smith here again for Guitar World Magazine.

00:10 Over the next few months, we're going

00:12 to talk a little bit about the way that I solo

00:15 and the three approaches that I've

00:16 found useful to expanding my vocabulary within the blues.

00:20 That would be chromaticism, diminished and augmented chords,

00:24 and 2-5-1 turnarounds.

00:25 These are the things that I use to build bridges

00:28 between chords, which to me is the difference between just

00:32 playing pentatonic blues and playing notes

00:34 that work over the chords and playing through the changes.

00:37 When you connect each chord together,

00:39 you're really playing through the chords.

00:41 And I'm using those three bridges--

00:43 chromaticism, diminished and augmented chords,

00:46 and 2-5-1 turnarounds-- to create those bridges.

00:49 So we're going to start with chromaticism.

00:52 All right, so to start off, I'm going

00:54 to play a chorus of a blues in the key of A, a shuffle.

00:58 And I'm going to chromatically link together rhythm chords

01:01 so that you can hear the way that I start to hear

01:03 these bridges in between chords.

01:05 So it's going to be a very specific, simple 12-bar blues

01:08 in A with chromatic chords in between each change.

01:12 Here we go.

01:14 1, 2, 3, 4.

01:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:18 [PLAYING CHORDS]

01:22 OK, so you can hear that I chromatically

01:44 link together every chord, whether it

01:46 be coming down from a half step above,

01:50 coming up from a half step below, maybe from a full step

01:54 and using two chords to create motion.

01:56 So I'm playing things like A9 and then E flat 7

02:03 to lead me to D7.

02:05 And then maybe I'll play G flat--

02:08 I mean, G sharp 9, A flat 9 to lead me back to A9,

02:11 things like that.

02:13 When you start to hear those chords in between the chords,

02:16 you will naturally start to want to play

02:18 that stuff within your soloing.

02:19 So it's a great, great exercise to play rhythm guitar like that

02:25 and start adding in as much chromatic motion as you can,

02:27 because your ear will start becoming

02:29 trained to hearing that when you're soloing.

02:31 All right, so how do you start applying this to your solos?

02:36 Let's take the first move within a 12-bar blues, the 1 to the 4,

02:40 right?

02:40 Everybody is familiar with this move.

02:42 We're going to go from A7 or A9, A dominant to D7.

02:49 And I did that by playing E flat 7 to lead me to D7.

02:55 How would you spell that out?

02:56 Well, how many of you have ever played this in a slow blues?

02:59 Probably many of you.

03:06 Well, how would you play that in a solo, in a shuffle?

03:09 I'd play this.

03:09 [MUSIC PLAYING]

03:13 OK, so what did I do right there?

03:20 I very simply spelled out that D flat--

03:23 I mean, E flat 7--

03:24 [MUSIC PLAYING]

03:27 --and resolved back to A or to the third of D.

03:31 [MUSIC PLAYING]

03:37 So again, I'm just thinking about connecting the one chord

03:42 to the next with that chromatic move, the same way I did in the rhythm guitar.

03:45 I'm going to do it in my solos.

03:47 And you can do this all over the place.

03:51 So let's now move back from the 4 to the 1, the next change in the blues.

03:56 So here we are playing D7 and going back to A by playing A flat.

04:05 Well, how would you think about that?

04:07 There's a lot of things you can do.

04:09 I might end up down here.

04:10 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:13 It might just be as simple as one note.

04:20 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:24 So I might go from the 4 and play something like that,

04:28 which you would hear many bebop guitar players play.

04:31 But really, all you're doing there is highlighting that A flat--

04:34 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:37 --and playing that.

04:38 So--

04:39 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:42 That's--

04:44 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:47 Again, when you start hearing this stuff as it goes by,

04:51 you kind of can't help yourself.

04:53 Once you've learned to play it rhythmically

04:55 and you start hearing all those little movements between chords,

04:58 it's going to come out automatically in your lead playing.

05:02 So let's finish out the progression.

05:04 We're on the 5 chord, which is E7.

05:08 So I might play something like this.

05:09 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:12 So there I'm playing chromatically both up and down

05:15 by going up to the 3rd of D and then down to the dominant 7

05:22 and then playing an E chord.

05:23 And then I do the same maybe on D.

05:25 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:28 And then I'd walk back up to G--

05:31 I mean to A--

05:33 from G.

05:33 So maybe something like that.

05:34 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:37 There's so many options.

05:44 But again, I'm not playing anything fancy there.

05:46 I'm not thinking about scales.

05:48 I'm not thinking about chord tones.

05:50 I'm literally just chromatically connecting the 1 to the 4,

05:53 the 4 to the 1, the 5 to the 4, and the 4 back to the 1.

05:57 The chords that you already know,

05:58 when you start thinking about building bridges

06:00 between those chords chromatically, again,

06:03 all that vocabulary just starts to lay itself out for you.

06:06 [MUSIC PLAYING]

06:09 (upbeat music)

06:12 (whooshing)

Josh Smith - Using Chromatic Approaches To Expand Your Blues Soloing Vocabulary

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