Learn Lead Guitar - Chord Tone Soloing

In this lesson we'll be talking about chord tone soloing. What that means is, playing chord tones as the main note over each chord. Since the discussion in theory of scales have come along, guitarists especially have pretty much focused on the scales and really gotten away from understanding what notes would be preferred to be played over each chord. So we are going to start simple, the most obvious choices that aren't so obvious nowadays are to play the chord tones of the chords that are following passing by.

So in this progression we are going to have a D Minor to C Major progression. In D Minor chord you have got D, F and A; D is the root, F is the Minor third, and A is the perfect fifth. C Major chord, you have got C as the root, E is the Major third, and G is the perfect fifth. So when each of this chords is playing, you can play anyone of those three notes.

So we are going to start by just playing a root over each chord. So if you have D Minor, and C Major, we are going to play in the shape 6, which is the fifth fret. We are going to D Minor, so that's a D note to C, which is the root of C Major. We want to play thirds, we are going to play the F of D Minor to the E of C Major. If we want to play fifths, we are going to play the A of D Minor to the G of C Major. Let's play the progression and you can hear all that sounds.

So these are roots. Now then go onto fifths, F to E. Now we are going to go into the fifths, into G. Now we are going to go from the third of D minor to the fifth of C. It's the F, and then G.

So you can hear that in each case, the notes sound fine, they sound really nice. As you get to know how the roots in the thirds and fifth sound over each chord, in the future topics we are going to get into adding more notes. But this will give you the framework for playing the chord tones as the main framework for your solo. So let's see in the next lesson.


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