What Are You Implying?
DUE TO ISOLATION, this Headlines is audio-only, which we hope will tide us over until we find a new normal, and deals with spelling out chords or harmony when soloing – a useful skill in a trio with just bass and drums. Listen to The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream and the John Mayer trio to see what I mean. As a soloist on guitar, this context gives a great deal of freedom, and also carries the responsibility of outlining the underlying chords/ harmony, at least some of the time!
Listen to Little Wing or Tal Farlow play Here’s That Rainy Day and you’ll hear chords, triads and single-note melodies weaved together to create a harmonic picture. This approach is obviously most challenging when playing unaccompanied, but even the simplest bass part can relieve you of the responsibility for holding down the root notes, and the drums can carry the rhythmic momentum. Having the technique to play intricate lines interspersed with chord fragments really helps, but the core skill here is the knowledge of chord shapes/inversions around the fretboard. The more you know, the more choices you will have.
Keeping an eye open for where chord shapes coincide with pentatonic shapes is a real game-changer, as is separating them into single-note arpeggios to create a harmonically detailed line. There is various musical language to describe the way you might organise your scale and chord fragments, but I’ve found it helpful to think of the pentatonic shapes as the ‘safe’ zone, with various options to depart temporarily – or completely if you’re feeling it. This approach can also be used over chords, as long as you know what they are! Larry Carlton manages to imply detailed chord extensions by superimposing one chord over another, so check him out, too.