Tag Archives: triad

How To Use The Augmented Triad In A Jazz Blues Solo

The augmented triad is a great and very distinct sound to add to your playing. In this video I am going show you a solo on a 12 bar blues where I am using this triad on most of the chords. I am going to analyze it and talk about where I am using it and what kind of sound the augmented triad adds to the chords.

Having many sounds and ideas is really important to create solos that don’t always sound the same and using the augmented triad is a great way to do that. You will find that a lot of players like Kurt Rosenwinkel and Sonny Rollins often use this triad in their playing.

The Augmented Triad

The augmented triad is a major triad with a raised 5th, so if you look at a Bb augemented triad:

Bb major: Bb D F,

Bb augmented: Bb D F#

Augmented triad symmetry

The triad is a stack of major thirds: Bb-D and D-F#. F#-Bb would be another major third. This is really useful because symmetrical arpeggios can easily be transposed and will be have the same fingering along the neck.

If you want to practice the Bb augmented triads then these two positions will already get you pretty far.

Augmented Triads in the Diatonic Triads

Since the main example in this lesson is a blues chorus in the key of Bb, then it probably makes the most sense to use Bb lydian b7 or F melodic minor as an example of a scale that contains an augmented triad.

Here is an overview of the diatonic triads in F melodic minor:

Fm,Gm,Abaug,Bb,C,Ddim,Edim

7 ways to use an Augmented Triad – The Bb Blues Example

The example below is a one chorus blues solo where I use the augmented triad in different ways through out the chorus.

The first two bars are just there to state the changes and the blues. playing clear lines.

The line in bars 3-4 starts with a triad pair with an augmented triad. The sound is a Bb7(#11) or Bb lydian b7. The triad pair I am using is Abaug and Bb triads. The triad pairs with the augmented triads are really colorful and a great sound on a dom7th chord.

In bar 4 I am changing the chord to an altered dominant. This means using B melodic minor, which contains the D augmented triad. Here it is used in the 1st inversion.

The next example of an augmented triad is in bar 6 on the Ab7 chord. Here the scale sound is Eb minor melodic and the triad used is a Gb augmented triad.

The G7alt pointing towards the Cm7 in bar 9 also makes use of an augmented triad. Here it is a B augmented triad out of the G altered or Ab melodic minor.

A little Dorian Hack

Even though the Cm7 in the II V I in Bb does not really have a scale with an augmented triad you can still use one in the way that I am doing here. The idea is to use the G augmented triad as a sort of leading note structure, almost like a G7.

The F7alt has an A augmented triad, diatonic to F altered or Gb melodic minor. Here I am playing it from the F.

Whole-tone scale

The final turnaround is here a bar of Bb7 followed by a bar of F7. The F7 is in this case an F7 from the whole tone scale. The entire lick in bar 12 is based on moving triads up in whole steps. The triads are displaced a bit to make them sound a little more interesting.

If you want more ideas for soloing on a Bb jazz blues then check out this lesson:

Bb Jazz Blues Lesson 1

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How to Use augmented triads in a jazz blues solo

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The 7 Levels Of Cm7 Dorian – Triads to Complete Voicing Arpeggios

The search for more ideas and new things to play never ends! This video will go over 7 different types of arpeggios, scales and other voicing structures you can use when improvising over a Cm7 chord some you probably already use and some you may not have in your vocabulary yet.

Thinking in categories can help you check if there is something you never really checked out or got to use while soloing, and it is also quite likely that some of these you never used before.

Content:

0:00 Intro

1:11 Level 1 – 3 Basic 7th Chord Arpeggios

1:30 Discussing the different arpeggios

2:13 Difference between Modal and more dense progressions

2:31 Level 2 – Pentatonics (and Super-imposing them)

3:01 Overview of the different pentatonics

4:27 Level 3 -Triads

5:00 Triads and triad upper-structures

6:03 Level 4 – Quartal Arpeggios from the Dorian mode

6:24 Quartal arpeggios for a Cm7

7:22 Level 5 – Shell-Voicings

7:41 What they are nmd Which Shell voicings to use

8:36 Level 6 – Quintal Arpeggios

9:02 Quintal harmony and linking it to a pentatonic scale

9:51 Who said “Andy Sumners and Jimi Hendrix”

10:05 Level 7 – Drop2 voicing arpeggios

10:30 Using and playing arpeggios with a larger range.

11:21 Did I miss something you use a lot?

11:59 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page!

Guitar Solo With Only Triads – Jazz Blues

The triad is one of the strongest melodies that we have. It is a part of so many famous songs that it makes sense to work on using triads when playing a jazz guitar solo.

In this lesson I will go over the triads you can use for all the chords in a 12 bar Jazz Blues in the key of F. I also will talk about how I use some of these triads in a solo that I played and transcribed. At the end of the lesson I will also go over some exercises that are useful if you want to be more flexible when using triad based improvisation.

Getting started with Triads

The first thing we need to do is to find some triads for each of the chords in the 12 bar blues.

The chord progression is shown here below:

In this next part of the lesson I will quickly go over the different triads that we have available.

Finding triads for the I and the IV chord

In the blues the I and the IV chord, in this case F7 and Bb7, are more or less identical. They are both mixolydian sounding dominant chords.

The triads that we have available are found on the root, 3rd, 5th and 6th of the scale:

F7: F major, A dim, C minor and D minor

Bb7: B major, D dim, F minor and G minor

Using Harmonic minor to pull to the IV

On the F7 in bar 4 I have an F7(b9) which is there to pull even stronger to Bb7 in bar 5. The scale I am using on this chord is F mixolydian b9,b13, also known as Bb harmonic minor.

The triads we get from this scale are:

F7: F major, A dim, Cdim and Edim

Triads for the #IV dim chord

On the #IV dim in bar 6 I use the C harmonic minor scale. This scale is both close to the F7 chord and contain the B diminished chord.

Bdim: B dim, D dim, F dim, Ab dim

A secondary dominant resolving to minor

The D7 in bar 8 is an auxiliary dom7th chord used to take us to the Gm7 in the final cadence of the blues.

Since it is a dom7th chord resolving to a minor chord the scale that fits on this chord is a harmonic minor scale. In this case the G harmonic minor scale.

D7: D major, F# dim, Adim and Cdim

The II Chord in a major cadence

On the II chord I have three triads. Just the basic triads found on the root, 3rd and 5th:

Gm7: Gm, Bb, Dm

The Altered Dominant

The C7 in bar 10 is an altered dominant. The C7 altered scale is the same as Db melodic minor and the triads we can find here are a little different than those on the other chords:

C7alt: Dbm, Eaug, Gb, Bbdim

Guitar Solo with only triads

The solo is written out here below. In most of the bars I am only using one triad so it should be fairly easy to follow.

The first bar is using the basic F major triad in 1st inversion. On a blues you can easily use the triad on the root, and in fact this is a very good triad to get the blues sound across.

On the Bb7 in bar 2 the triad used is again 1st inversion. Here I use the triad found on the 3rd of Bb7: D dim.

Returning to the F7 the triad used is Dm. The Dm in bar 3 is “voice-lead” into an Eb dim triad in bar 4. The Eb dim triad is a great to get the F7b9 sound across.

In the Bb7, Bdim F7 section in bars 5-7 I have an alternative progression that makes sense in another way that the chords move under it. The triads use are F minor, F dim, and F major.

On the D7b9 the triad used is an F# dim.

In the final cadence in bars 9 and 10 I start to use more triads per bar. On the Gm7 it is a combination of a Bb major and a G minor triad. The C7 alt combines Gb major and E augmented triads.

The two triads on the C7 altered chord actually form a triad pair because they don’t have common notes. You can look up more of my lessons on triad pairs here: Triad Pairs

Getting more rhythms down

A bonus feature with using the triads like this is that you only have three notes. The fact that you only have three notes will force you to be more creative with the rhythms and I actually think that this is a good enough reason on it’s own to start working on this!

I will probably make a video on this approach at some time, let me know if you are interested.

Getting more flexible and opening up your abilities with the triads

As you can probably see I don’t only play the triads in root position from the root to the 5th, and there are a lot more ways to make melodies with them.

To get more options when using the triads I have included a few exercises that you can work on.

This first exercise is to just simply play the diatonic triads through the scale. This is important to be able to find the different triads for the chord and of course also to be able to play them in the context of the scale where the underlying chord is found.

To build a bigger overview I would recommend that you also check out the other inversions as well. Here are the 1st inversions of the diatonic triads

and the 2nd inversion:

Besides having the overview of the diatonic triads in a position it can also be very practical to know the triad in this position as shown here below.

Another useful exercise would be to play the position version of the triad in inversions.

Exploring more melodies

A final idea is to mix up the order of the notes. If you think of a triad as 1,3 and 5, then you can also make a lot of other melodies by changing the order of the notes. The example here below is showing the diatonic triads played in a 3 1 5 pattern through the scale.

Adding the triads to your vocabulary!

Of course the example solo in this lesson is a bit radical in the sense that while it can be useful as an experiment to work like this and see what you can come up with. In the end you want to work on the process of finding the triads and you also want to try get used to make “alternative” chord progressions that you can use for solos.

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Guitar Solo With Only Triads – Jazz Blues

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How to Come up with New solo ideas – Rethink the stuff you already know

It can be difficult to come up with new ideas for your solos, but this video talks about how you can use all of the diatonic triads, arpeggios, pentatonic scales etc and find the right ones to the chord you are playing over. Not only playing just with the arpeggio, but also how to mix it with the other material.

The video has a lot of examples and explanations and also a lot of philosphy on playing over changes, superimposing arpeggios and other things like developing a personal sound and taste.

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0:49 The Maj7 and the F Major Scale

1:10 What I will check out

1:48 The Fmaj7 chord and diatonic arpeggios

2.55 Solo using Fmaj7 arpeggio

3:12 How you solo with an arpeggio when learning new ideas

3:53 Arpeggio from the 3rd

4:18 Solo using Am7 Arpeggio

4:43 Why we don’t really want the Bb in there and C7 doesn’t work

5:46 A 3rd below: Dm7

5:56 Solo using Dm7 Arpeggio

6:31 Arpeggios against another root note and the having an overview of the scale

8:20 Solo using F major triad 9:29 Am triad solo

9:51 Thoughts on making melodies with Am triad vs Fmaj7

11:01 Solo using C major triad 11:23 C major triad and not having the 3rd in the arpeggio.

12:14 Solo using D minor triad

12:32 Finding associations with the different arpeggios and the sound they make

13:48 Quartal Harmony

15:19 Solo using Quartal Arp from G

15:34 DIfferent fingerings and mixing it with other things

16:27 Solo using Quartal Arp from A

16:53 Connecting to the chord, using chord tones

17:28 Solo using Quartal Arp from D

17:46 Emphasizing the intervals in the arpeggio

18:32 Solo using Quartal Arp from E

18:53 Different patterns of the Arpeggio

19:37Other options like spread voicing, drop2 and inversions..

20:14 Pentatonics

20:27 Solo using Dm Pentatonic

20:47 Choosing pentatonic scales for a chord

21:48 Solo using Am Pentatonic

22:13 The “other”Pentatonic scales lesson series

22:48 Shell Voicings – Finding Useable

24:10 Solo using Fmaj7 Shell Voicing

24:51 Solo using Am7 Shell Voicing

25:05 Ways to practice shell voicings in postition and along the neck

26:26 Solo using Dm7 Shell Voicing

27:38 Solo using Em7b5 Shell Voicing

27:55 Compensating for the lack of chord tones in the arpeggio

28:44 What am I trying to do when practicing with these arpeggios

29:26 Sus4 triads and Mark Turner

30:03 Finding useable Sus4 triads

30:38 Difference between Sus4 and Quartal Harmony?

32:02 Solo using Gsus4 triads

32:33 Solo using Asus4 triads 32.49 The sound of the sus4 triad

33:35 Solo using Csus4 triads

33:51 Using the resolution of the sus chord in the melody as well.

34:42 Solo using Dsus4 triads

35:05 Sus4 triads as voicings.

35:33 Using this approach to develop and understand your own taste

37:38 Outro

Vlog: Advanced ideas: Triads and Spread Triads on Out Of Nowhere

Triads and Spread Triads are invaluable as tools for making jazz lines, especially in the realm of more modern sounding melodies. The video is in three main parts: An analysis of the chord progression, Finding triads that can be used and discussing outside or exotic scale choices, and finally making lines with the material and talking about the colors of the superimposed jazz guitar triads. How to make guitar licks and what rules come into play when using triad pairs and spread triads in jazz guitar solos.

This video turned out to be a lot longer than I thought, but especially the ending I think is a good documentation of how I write lines and you see me experiment with the material I find through the analysis and the triad options.

There’s also a lot of good discussion on melodies and how you write strong melodies with material like this.

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0:00 Intro

Analysis:

1:01 Analysis of chords and form
1:28 Key and form
1:56 The Chords and their function
2:14 The mysterious Eb7 German Augmented Sixth Chord
2:43 The Double Diminished #IV explanation
3:45 Back to the Harmonic Analysis
4:49 How Out Of Nowhere is about Eb7 in G major
5:46 Analysis of The 2nd half of the song
7:02 A modal aspect of Out Of Nowhere
7:46 Why Triads and Diatonic triads are so great for solos

Finding Options Triads for the chords

8:44 Selecting Triads
9:16 Triad options for Gmaj7

10:17 adding the Lydian Options to Gmaj7
11:56 Harmonizing the melody with a lydian sound
12:51 Lydian Augmented triads on Gmaj7
13:48 Augmented Scale on Gmaj7
14:30 Bbm7 Eb7
16:45 C7(#11)
17:15 Bm7
17:32 E7 altered
18:53 Am
22:07 Am7 D7
22:54 D7 altered
23:26 D7 Diminished

Making Lines:

24:48 Making lines with triads
26:31 Extensions in the melody of Out Of Nowhere
26:48 G major/ B minor triad over Gmaj7
29:21 Voice-leading B minor to Bb minor
31:11 Bbm Eb7
33:48 Connecting Gmaj7 C7
34:47 G major – Melodic Minor Hack
37:13 Bm7 E7alt – E7 triad pairs
38:48 Ab+ and Bb major
41:21 Am
42:18 The might Am triad
43:26 Making D7 altered lines
45:18 D7 Diminished Line Ideas

46:15 Exotic scales and Spread Triads

47:24 Spread Triads On Gmaj7
51:33 Bbm Eb7 ideas with Open Triads
52:41 Spread triad ideas for E7alt
53:40 Rules of melodic movement in a Jazz Lick
56:06 Mark Turner and Kurt Rosenwinkel
57:30 Emphasizing upper structures and extensions
58:51 Resolving into the Lydian Augmented sound

Triads – Easy 3 note Jazz Chords

Using triads to play jazz chords a very powerful tool. We can play a wide range of chords and they are very easy to add notes to or change notes to give us the extensions or alterations we want.

It’s a very practical and guitaristic approach but also one that I on guitar is often very practical and beautiful in a lot of musical settings.

Finding triads for each chord

Take a look at these these Cmaj7 voicings which are all an E minor triad over a C bass note.

So if we take the Cmaj7: We get these notes: C E G B so that’s a C and an E minor triad, and we can use it like that when we are comping or soloing.

Now take a look at the diatonic chords in C major:

So if you want to play the chord but not the root, you can use the triad from the 3rd. Using this concept we have these triads to play in C major:

Cmaj7: E minor triad
Dm7: F major triad
Em7: G major triad
Fmaj7: A minor triad
G7: Bdim triad
Am7: C major triad
Bm7b5: D minor triad.

So if you know how a chord is constructed it is easy to figure out what triad you can use to play that chord. There’s another concept that is closely related to this which is called upper-structure triads. The idea behind this is that you use a triad as the extension part of a chord to have a strong sounding voicing or melody, but that’s a little more complicated theoretically and for another lesson.

The advantage to this approach it is an easy way to play rootless chords and fever notes makes it more flexible for adding notes and making melodies within the chords.

Triad exercises – Technique

The basic exercise you need for this is to learn the triads in inversions on every set of three strings. When using them as chords I play them 90% of the time on the two top sets, but since triads are such a basic resource that you need for soloing as well as chords I’ve chosen to demonstrate all three types of triads that are found in the major scale on all string sets:

Basic II V I cadences

Of course you can make a lot more exercises with the triads, playing them in scales and different voiceleading or melodic ideas but for now I just cover the basics. You should check it out in diatonic situations, and work it through songs since triads are one of the fundamental building blocks in most kinds of music.

George van Eps has written a lot of exercises with triads in his books everything with fingerings and in all keys, worthwhile checking out and practicing from.

Let’s continue by playing a few cadences in C, so Dm7, G7, Cmaj7:

Adding extensions and alterations to the jazz chords

To make this approach work we also need to have a way to deal with altered dominants. For that I use the approach that I also talked about in my lesson on diatonic arpeggios: Altered chords and superimposing Namely taking the upper part of the tritone substitute and used that on an altered dominant.

Another way to say that is: Altered dominants: use the dim chord from the 7th degree: G7alt: F dim: F Ab B which is 7,b9,3rd

You can use some of the same substitution rules as I explained in on of the drop2 lessons, so
13 instead of 5 (example: G7/Bdim), b5 instead of 5 and to make a sus4 chord you can suspend the 3rd with the 4th.

For minor chords: 11th instead of 5th or #11 instead of 5 on major 7th chords (you could also see that as a sus4 triad in inversion being used over a C bass note, but since I did not talk about sus4 triads and inversions I won’t go furter into that. The last example is how to replace the 7th with the 6th.

Putting it to use

Just so you get an idea about how I incorporate it, here’s an example over a trusted old I IV II V with altered dominants: Dm7 G7alt Cmaj7 A7alt

You might notice that I am trying to play with the different voices within the chords because the triad approach lends itself to this very well.

I hope you can use the material and the ideas I went over here to start using Triads in your own comping and chord melody playing. As I already mentioned it is something that I use really a lot because it is flexible and lends it self well to most situations.

If you want some more examples of how I use triad based voicings in the context of a standard you can check out the lesson here below:

Comping Etude – How High The Moon

If you want to study the examples I went over in the lesson you can of course also download them as a pdf here:

triads-easy-3-note-jazz-chords

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics or how I can make the lessons better then please feel free to leave on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you want to hear.

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C Jazz Blues with triad voicings

Playing chords on a jazz progression can be quite complicated, and the voice leading, the extensions and alterations makes us forget about making music. Using triads for chords is a very practical and easy way to play full chords and still have a lot of flexibility to interact with the rest of the band. This lesson is going over how you find triad voicings for a C jazz blues and also demonstrating what you can do with the voicings you find using melodies and inversions.

Basic triad voicings

To demonstrate how easily you can use the triads as chords in a blues I have written out a chorus of voicings in example 1. I play the chorus in the videos, and you should notice that I don’t use the simple rhythm that I’ve written, but interpret that freely. I am however only using the voicings in example 1.

The way I find the triad voicings is quite simple and an approach that is almost always coming back in both comping and improvisation lessons:

A C7 chord consists of the notes C E G Bb. If we take away the C we are left with the notes E G and Bb which spell out an E diminished triad. This way of looking at the diatonic triad found on the 3rd of the chord is how I find most of the triads.

The only exception in this lesson is the dom7th(b9) chords. Here I take an common C7(b9) voicing: C E Bb Db and if we take the C away we are left with the notes E Bb Db, which is infact an inversion of a Bb diminished triad. The conclusion is that we can use the diminished triad found on the 7th for dom7th(b9) chords.

I have written out the reasoning on the guitar with first a C7 and then a C7(b9) voicing in example 2

So now that we can find triads for all the chords we can of course also invert them.

In this lesson I have kept everything on the middle string set (D,G,B) just to keep it simple and also because that is the place where they are the most effective.

In example 3 I have written out the chords with inversions:

C7 – Edim

F7 – Adim

Dm7 – Fmajor

G7 – Bdim

F#dim – Ebdim

C7(b9) – Bbdim

G7(b9) – Fdim

Em7(b5) – Gm

The only one that takes a little explaining is the Ebdim triad over the F#dim(7) chord. Since F# dim is F# A C Eb the one note that is in both the chord before and the chord following it is the C, so I leave that out and have: F# A Eb Which is an inversion of and Ebdim triad.

I left the A7 and the Gm7 voicings for you to figure out by yourself, it’s a good exercise!

Adding melody to the triads

Now that we have triad voicings for all the chords we can start working on adding melodies. I think my approach to this is really simple, for each of the triad inversions we can use the voicing and also use the neighbouring notes in the scale to make melodies. If you look at the first bar of example 4 you can see that I am using an E dim triad over the C7 but then changing the melody from G to Bb and A. A similar idea is used over the F7 where the A top note is replaced with a G in a melodic movement.

To work this out you need to be able to work out what scale fits the chord and you need to be able to play that scale on the B string.

To list some examples of which scales I use:

C7 – Fmajor (or C mixolydian if that works better for you)

F7 – Bbmajor

Gm7 – Fmajor

C7b9 – F harmonic minor.

F#dim – G harmonic minor

Em7(b5) – Fmajor

A7 – D harmonic minor

The final example is a blues chorus with some rhythmical and melodic variations added. If you work your way through it you should be able to figure it out without too much trouble.

I think the chorus in example 4 is so busy that it is almost a solo, but it will work as a comp example, and it also demonstrates a lot of the options available with this approach.

I hope you can use the material I went over here to get some flexible and effective voicings into your vocabulary. If you want to check out more on triad voicings you can check out my lesson : III VI II V I with triads

If you want to check out some mote chords and learn some drop2 voicings you can also check out my WebStore lesson:

F Blues Comping Etude #1

If you want to study the examples away from the video or article you can download a pdf here:

C Jazz Blues with triad voicings

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Triad Pairs – Part 1

In this lesson I am going to go over what triad pairs are and how you can use them in improvisation and try to highlight some of the useful aspects of the lines you can make with them.

Triad Pairs withut common notes

The reason why we use triads to improvise is that it is a very strong melodic structure. This is probably the most important reason why we spend so much time on working on triads and look at them as something we can superimpose on other chords, which is what is often referred to as upper-structure triads.

When you hear people talking about improvisation referring to triad pairs, what they usually mean is a pair of triads without common notes. The fact that they are without common notes means that we could look at it as a sort of scale with six notes that is naturally split in to two groups.

Let’s first look at a basic example: C major scale, two triads F and G major.

F and G major triads have no common notes (that is always going to be the case for two diatonic triads that are a 2nd apart in a major scale) In example 1 I have written them out first as 2 triads and then as the scale you get if you combine them. In this lesson I am not going to go too much into treating them like scales, simply because I find myself using them more as triads that I chain together.

Triad Exercises

Let’s first quickly go over some useful triad exercises to make sure that we have the flexibility to make lines with the triads.

The first one is a major triad in inversion on a string set, you need to do this for minor, dim and augmented triads and other string sets of course.

Remember that you can practice these as chords and as arpeggios, as I do in the video.

To have a bigger vocabulary of triad inversions you could also try the two varitions that use 2 strings

Of course you should also try to pracitice diatonic triads in a major scale to be able to place them in the context that you need to use them, and what many often forget is that you should also do this with the inversions which is a really good way to get a better overview of what notes are in what triads. Example 4 is Diatonic triads of C major in the 2nd inversion

Remember that is not about speed it is about overview and having the shapes in your fingers for later.

Triad Pair Hack

Hopefully this should get you on the road to combine triads. In the 2nd part of this series I am going to give a few more exercises to work on gaining overview and making melodies with this material.

How do we chose a good set of triads for a chord?

In most situations when you encounter a chord it is in a key, which has a scale with 7 notes. In most cases you have an avoid not in the scale, so a note that does not fit the chord well and that you can not land on.

If you know the avoid note you can easily make a triad pair, let’s do a few examples:

Dm7 in the key of C, depending on the situation you might consider the B an avoid note.

Cmajor without a B is C D E F G A, if we make triads on the notes after the B (C and D) we get C major and D minor

G7(b9) in Cm Harmonic. Here C is the avoid note.

C min harmonic without a C: D Eb F G Ab B , and the triads on the notes after C(D and Eb) are D dim and Eb augmented triads.

Lines with triad pairs

Now that we have a strategy for finding triad pairs and some exercises for playing triads we can try to put the two together in some lines:

In the first example I am using the triad pair from above on a Dm7 chord. The line starts with a second inversion Dm triad and contiues to a first inversion C major triad. The G7 alt line is basically a scale run with a trill at the beginning. It resolves to the 3rd(E) of Cmaj7

The second example is using the triad pair we deduced for a G7(b9) in the previous part of the lesson: D dim and Eb aug triads. The line on the Dm7 is essentially derived from an Fmaj7 arpeggio and leads into the dominant by encircling the 3rd(B). The dominant line is first the Eb aug triad in second inversion and then the D dim triad, after that it resolves down the scale to the 3rd(E) of Cmaj7.

The final example is combining all the triad pairs so first Dm and C over Dm7 and then Ebaug and Ddim over G7(b). I added a pair for Cmaj7. Same process as above: The avoid note over the Cmaj7 is an F, if I take that away and construct triads on the two following notes I get G major and A minor triads.

The line consists of playing each triad in a 4 note pattern so that it is first Dm 2nd inversion, then C root position followed by Ebaug 2nd inversion and D dim root position. This resolves to a G root position and Am 1st inversion over the Cmaj7 where it finally ends on the 9th(D)

As always I hope you can use the ideas and concept I went over in this lesson, as always I’d suggest that you take them as a starting point and use them to make your own lines with triad pairs.

Check out how I use Triad pairs in this solo transcription/lesson:

There will never be another you – Reharmonization Solo

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Triad Pairs Part 1

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Pentatonics part 3 – Arpeggios and Melodic ideas

In this lesson I am going to take another approach to using pentatonic scales so that we can get some other sounds than what you might already use from it. I am going to do that by analyzing some of the different structures that are contained in it and later demonstrating how that can be used in a solo.

The Scale and some arpeggios

For the theory part of this lesson I’ll use the C minor pentatonic scale as shown here:

I assume that you are familiar with the notes in the scale : C Eb F G Bb

Let’s have a look at what triads we can pull out of the scale, if you try to build a major or minor triad from each of the notes in the scale you find that these 2 triads are the only possibilities:

Finding them is quite simple, For each note in the scale you look whether they have f.ex a minor 3rd, so that is only possible for C and G, and for G we can’t make a triad because we don’t have a fifth(D) in the scale.

In last weeks lesson I was talking about: Sus4 Triads as Upper Structures and you can in the same way as I described above find three of those in the scale: Csus4, Fsus4 and Bbsus4.

As I talked about in the lesson on the Sus4 triads they are connected to quartal harmony, and this lesson: Diatonic chords of the Pentatonic Scale Will show you how pentatonic chords and quartal harmony are very closely related.

So now we have 5 different triads that we can use to make lines with, and don’t remember that you can also use their inversions and use them as Open Triads in your lines so that is in fact a vast amount of structures to play with.

The lines

Our goal is of course to make pentatonic lines that sound less “standard pentatonic” so that we can combine the fact that we are using a scale we know very well with some structures in the scale that we might not very often use.

The first example is the 1st 4 bars of the song Night and Day. On the Abmaj7 I am using C minor pentatonic and playing a Csus4 triad followed by an Eb major triad. The scale choice for the G7al is Db maor or Bb minor pentatonic. On that I am first playing a Db major triad in a sequence followed by a Bb minor triad before it resolves to the fifth(G) of Cmaj7.

The second example is a II V I in G major. Here I am using Am pentatonic over the Am7 and Fm (or Ab major) pentatonic over the D7alt.

The first part of the line is just an Am triad melody until the 3 of the bar. It is followed by a Dsus4 root position triad. On the D7 it descends down an Ab major triad followed by an ascending Bbsus4 triad that resolves to the fifth(D) of Gmaj7

The last example is a II V I in D major. On the E minor I am (again) using the pentatonic scale of the root of the chord, and the A7alt is using a C minor (or Eb major) pentatonic scale. The Em line is the combination of first a G major triad in a pattern and then a descending Asus4 triad. On the A7alt the line is constructed by first an Fsus4 arpeggio followed by a Csus4 arpeggio before it resolves to the 9(E) of Dmaj.

I hope you can use some of the ideas I covered in this lesson to make up new lines with pentatonic scales. This approach can also serve as a bridge towards using different arpeggios over chords in major or melodic minor situations, so in that way it might be a gateway to more jazz approaches when soloing.

As always you can download a PDF of the examples here for later study:

Pentatonics part 3 – Arpeggios and Melodic ideas

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Diminished Scale on Dom7th Chords

In my lesson on scale choices for dominant chords: Dom7th chords One of the examples was using the diminished scale. In this lesson I want to show how I make lines using the major triads in the diminished scale and give a few examples and exercises to help developing that.

Scale and Triad exercises

The diminished scale when applied to a dominant gives you the sound of for example a G7(b9#11,13) chord. To me the 13th sound very major this is because it is the major third of the chord that the dominat resolves to (the E in the case of the G7 to Cmaj7). At the same time the chord contains the b9 (Ab) which sounds minor so it is sort of in between the major (using the mixolydian sound) and minor dominants (harmonic minor or altered scales).

Let’s first try to play the scale:

I never spent a lot of time practicing the scale, and have always use more time on making lines with the arpeggios and structures I took out of it. That said you still need to be able to play it and should know it over the whole neck.

If we build chords by stacking thirds in this scale we will only get diminished chords, but if you start looking at the material you’ll see that it contains Major and minor triads too as well as dom7th and m7th chords. Since the diminished scale is symmetrical and you can moving everything around in minor thirds we can also see that if we have a G major triad, we will also have Bb, Db and E major triads.

To learn the triads and have material to make lines it is practical to learn the inversions of the triads:

Here are 3 of the 4 string sets. Of course there are many other ways to practice this than string sets, but for now let’s focus on these.

Since it could be useful to use more triads in one line it can be a good exercise to connect them and get an overview of where they are placed in one position. One exercise (you can and should make more yourself!) is to play the triads in this progression on one string set: G, E, Db, Bb G, etc.

That might look like this:

You can try to do thi son other string sets and come up with other ideas for connecting the triads and getting an overview of how they a placed in relation to each other.

Example lines

Often when people start working with the diminished scale they use the symmetrical aspect a lot. Probably because it is very practical on guitar and requires little effort in learning the scale or the structures in it. Personally I don’t like those melodies that much so I try not to use that too often and focus more on treating it like I would any other scale, which should be clear from the examples.

All my examples are II V I progressions in C major. For these examples I did not try to stay in one position, mostly because I think that this is material you should check out when you already have that knowledge covered for major and minor cadences.

In the first example I play a simle Dm7 arpeggio followed by a scale fragment. The Diminished line is first an E and then a Db major triad. Notice that I don’t only use root position inversions. After the triads I make a small trill on the b9 before resolving to the 3rd of C

The line on the Dm7 in the second example is very closely related to the one in the first since it is almost a diatonic transposition of it. On the G7 I play the same sort of pattern on a Db and then a Bbmajor triad. I guess this melodic pattern is developed from a RH picking pattern, but it does work well for arpeggios because it emphasizes the top note in the arpeggio. The line resolves chromatically to the maj7th on the C.

In the last line I use an Fmaj7 shell voicing on the Dm7, followed by a scale run from the root to the 5th. The line on the G7 consists of a 1st inversion E triad and a 2nd inversion Bb triad followed by the b9 and the third before resolving to the 5th of C.

As I mention in the video I find the 2 string inversions of triads a useful tool in soloing so it can be worthwhile to check that out, and I will probably make a lesson on that in the future.

As always you can download a PDF of the examples here:

Diminished Scale on Dom7th Chords