What Is Chord Tone Soloing?
Ever happen to you that you are improvising a guitar solo on a backing track, and you know that you are using the right scale, but still there is "something" missing? This happens because you are not using Chord Tone Soloing. Keep reading.
Chord tone soloing is a technique to make your solo sound "in" the backing track. With this technique you are able to choose the notes that will sound best at any given moment in your solo.
Chord Tone soloing does not restrict you to play "inside" the track: you can choose to deliberately violate it to sound "outside" like some Jazz players do. Even when you choose to do that, though, you can't make an "outside" lick sound good unless you have learned to play "inside" first.
Technically speaking, Chord Tone Soloing is very simple: you just have to play one or more of the notes of the chord that is playing right now... and yet most people find it very hard to do in practice at first.
Typical situations I see when people first try it without having been trained are:
- "I lost track of the chord progression. What chord is playing right now?"
- "I know what notes are in each chord, but I can't find them and play them in real time!"
- "Doing this requires a lot of 'mental mathematics' on chords and such, I just prefer to go by feeling" (NOTE: if you train properly there is no need to think of any 'mathematics' while you play. You just KNOW and HEAR where the right notes are. See the videos.)
So what can you do? In the video below I address these problems and more, and show you how you can overcome them.
Do you like what you see? If you do and you want to learn how to target chord notes in an easy and fun way, then click here to get the Chord Tone Soloing Course (offered FREE for a limited time).
Did you find this video helpful? Do not miss the next Music Theory videos!
Subscribe to the MusicTheoryForGuitar YouTube channel by clicking the button below.