Sometimes it is great to have some things to fall back on when you are soloing. Stuff that you can easily get to sound good and that fits the chord, whether you solo on a song or on a Blues, you don’t want to run out of ideas or play something that doesn’t work.
In this video, I am going to show you some easy things to use on a C7 chord. Most of this stuff, you already know, I just want to show you how to tweak it and make it sound better.
Chromatic Shortcut
So we keep it simple, this C7 and this scale around it:
You probably know this way of adding chromatic enclosures around the notes of a chord where you use a diatonic note above and a chromatic note below. Joe Pass does this really often.
There is a way of using this that nobody really talks about, that really makes it sound so much better, I will get to that in a minute.
Like anything else, you should mix it with other things like the scale. Then you can make lines like this:
Here I have an enclosure around the G and the E, but this line sounds a little predictable and you can make it much more interesting if you turn around the enclosures:
so now I am skipping down to F# back up to A and then resolve to G, and the same thing happens on the E. This makes the line sound much more interesting and unpredictable but still has a natural flow.
So if you work on using enclosures then think about turning them around like I am doing here, that can really make a huge difference.
Make an Arpeggio Sound Amazing
Before I show you a visual trick that works great for dominant chords then you should check out this really useful concept that combines arpeggios, chromaticism and triplet rhythms.
If you have seen any of my videos then you have probably heard me talk about how you can use the arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord.
For the C7 then you have the C7 arpeggio and from the 3rd, the E, then you have this Eø arpeggio.
This already gives you a lot of material, but an easy way to play this arpeggio so it sounds even better is to add some chromaticism around it and change the rhythm.
Here you add a chromatic leading note before the arpeggio, play the arpeggio as a triplet to add a little energy, and then also add some chromaticism going down from the top note.
And this works great for the Eø, George Benson does this all the time, but you can also do that from the root:
As you can see it is great to really know the diatonic arpeggios because a lot of them work on other chords, so if you want to check out some exercises for this then check out this video called The Most Important Scale Exercise For Jazz
Visual Triad and Quartal arpeggios
You probably know this as the top of a C7(13)
and a great visual connection is how this is diagonal across the strings and you can flip it around and then you have a C major triad.
and that is what I am using here, which sounds great and is pretty easy to play.
Let’s look at some another great arpeggio option
A Secret Arpeggio
One arpeggio, which is in fact another favorite of both Charlie Parker and George Benson, is using the arpeggio from the 7th of the chord, so for C7 that is a Bbmaj7 arpeggio. (filmed end of the examples no backing)
That is what I am using here, playing it as a triplet and putting it together with some basic scale melodies, typical bebop
But you can also connect it to a Gm triad like this:
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