Chords for Mark Lettieri - Using Chords in Solos

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_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ [C] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [C#] _ _
_ [A] I'm glad [E] I wore this sweater.
It's good.
There's not enough sweaters in guitar videos these days, right?
I don't know.
We're going to talk really quickly about integrating chords into your solo.
I chose a _ one chord vamp because, well, it's Wednesday.
But I thought this would be kind of an easy thing to do without getting too [F] deep into
a bunch of crazy changes because Frank Fempe is not that good at that.
[G#] So anyhow, what are we [G] doing?
We're thinking A minor.
So I'm thinking all the different minor possibilities, melodic minor, chromatic, all these different options.
But what we want to do is think about how we can put in some chords into our phrases.
A good way to start is just thinking about a little bit of contrast.
Play a single note line or two, throw a chord in.
Play a single note line or two, throw a chord in.
But in order to make it interesting, we don't really want to just play like an A minor chord.
I mean, we can, that's fine, but there's all these different ways to voice what could theoretically
be an A minor just by building a couple three note chords off of these different scales
that we just kind of briefly [C] just talked about.
So how about this shape?
This one, you could think of this almost like a Phrygian shape, or like a Lydian shape,
depending on where you [B] put your root.
[Em] If you put B, it's like a B Phrygian chord.
But in A, [Am] _ _ it's a nice kind of A minor sound.
So this could be a chord.
It actually could be technically like a Dorian chord.
[C] It has a [F#] major six in there.
It could also be a melodic minor [Am] sounding chord too.
_ _ _ [C]
A [Am] minor six.
_ A nine at the top, right?
So how do [F] we throw that in somewhere in our little phrase?
Well, let's think of that as our shape, right?
And I literally just sort of like, I mean, [B] I know this shape, but I plucked it out.
The third, [F#m] the five, the six, [C] _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [E] _ [B] _ _
[Em] _ _ _ [A] _ _ [C] _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ [E] _ _ [B] _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ [B] _ right?
[G] So what am I doing?
I'm using that chord as kind of like a period at the end of each sentence, right?
Here's a [Am] sentence.
_ [Cm] _ _ [F#m] _
_ [B] _ [E] Period.
_ [Em] _ [Am] _ _
[C] _ [Am] Period. _ _ _ _ _
_ [D] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _
[Am] Okay, so now I [C] had a couple periods.
So a few periods, that would be an ellipsis, right?
So what was that other shape I played?
This is cool.
Similar style.
It's got a six in it, right?
[E] _ Six, seven, three.
That's a cool voicing.
I think I may have stole that from, I don't know, probably Wayne Krantz.
_ We've been talking about him a lot today.
But again, there's another cool shape.
[B] _ That could be a cool [C] shape.
There's a [D] shape.
These [E] fourths are really fun.
[F#] _ [A] _ _
_ [D] _ _ [B] [A] Because you can move them [E] around in accordance to the scale very easily if you focus on the
B string, right?
So here's our shape.
[B] Now I'm targeting the B string as kind of like the leading melodic part of [A] what we're doing [B] here.
So [E] it's going to be this.
_ _ _ A little Dorian scale, but with the fourths in [C#m] there.
[E] _ _ _ _ [A] _ [C] _
_ [Am] _ _ [E] _ _ _ [C#] _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ [Em] _ _ [Am] _
_ _ _ _ _ [F#m] _ [C] _ _
_ _ _ _ [F#] _ _ [Cm] All right, but you can use those chords as like little periods.
Or you could reverse it.
You could start with a chord in [E] the solo.
[C] One, two, three. _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ [E] _ _ _
_ _ [F#] Two note chords are great [D] too.
[G] _ _
_ [C] _ _ [B] _ [A] _ _ [D] _ [C] _
_ _ _ [Am] _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ [G] _ _ [F#m] _ _ [C] _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ [E] _ [C] _ _
_ [A] _ _ [E] _ _ [G#] That's always a fun thing.
So you can take a chord, _ [B] like those [C] fourths, and kind of start clustering them [B] together.
So the [E] top note stays the same.
_ [C] _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ _ _
That changes how it moves, but now maybe we want to pivot it a different way.
So [G] get [E]
that kind of dissonance.
[A] _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ [Am] _ [C]
Just briefly.
We don't want to hang there too long, right?
_ [F#] _ [A] _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [D] _ [Am] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ [C] _ _ _ [D] _ _ [Am] _ _
_ [G] You know, whatever you want to do.
But kind of [G#m] _
think of it in terms of like you're writing a sentence or a paragraph or something,
and at the end of each sentence of single notes, you throw a chord, which is your period.
Or you can flip it.
The chords can be the majority of the [G] words, and then the period or the exclamation point
can be the single note line, right?
I think a good solo, whether or not what you just heard was considered a good solo, the
jury is out.
But any great solo, you should try to have some kind of contrast in your phrases.
I think using chords within your solos, especially if you're playing any kind of groove music
or jazz music or even rock music, it doesn't matter, _ just gives it a little bit of extra
flavor and breaks it up from the single note nature that we would mostly expect from a
guitar solo, right?
It doesn't have to just be single [C] notes.
You can get those chords in there and get some nice rhythm going with those.
Yeah, I'm going to get another one of these.
Peace.
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