We’ve been exploring the use of scales for soloing to learn which scales go with a particular chord. Please see the previous entries listed below for the details.

Let’s look at minor chords now. What scale can we use to solo over an E minor 7 for example? Let’s rephrase and ask this: in what scales does E minor 7 appear? If we limit our choices to major and melodic minor scales, we get this:

• C major: E minor 7 is the III chord
• D major: E minor 7 is the II chord
• G major: E minor 7 is the VI chord
• D melodic minor: E minor is the II chord.

If you are just starting out soloing or learning about how scales and chords are connected, you might have had the idea that there was only one scale you could use for a particular chord, E minor 7 in this instance. But now you’re a bit more savvy, and maybe even relieved, to see that you have many choices for melodic improvisation. The point? Learning a bit of chord scale theory can enrich your playing.

Before we move on, do please try each of the aforementioned scales over E minor 7. You can have you mind filled with memorizations of possible scales to use for a given chord; but until you get “inside” the music and *do* it, you won’t truly be soloing.

A note about modes. Get out your guitar and play a C major scale — except start the scale on the E note instead of the C note. After you play the scale, play an E minor chord, preferably in the same area you played the scale.

The purpose of doing this is to get you to hear that you can imply a chord by playing the *modes* associated with that chord. How is that possible? We’ll cover that next time.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2007 Darrin Koltow

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News - November 15, 2005 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

Scales and Soloing Series

• Scales To Use For Soloing
• Scales To Use For Soloing Part II
• Improvising With The Blues
• Scales To Play Over Dominant Chords
  
• Soloing With Melodic Minor Scale
• Soloing With Melodic Minor Scale II

We’re exploring the three types of chords that are all you need to see the Big Picture of making music. For the first two chord types (tonic and subdominant), see the past two entries: The Big Picture of Making Music and The Subdominant Chord.

Remember our main point: no matter what you see or hear in notated or recorded music, there are only three types of chords, as they relate to key centers: tonic, dominant and subdominant. These chords set up key centers in our Westernized minds when we hear them.

Let’s look at the dominant chord. What is it, and what’s its purpose in setting up a key center? Time for a metaphor: taking a vacation from home. The tonic chord is like your home. The lovely vacation place you travel to is like the subdominant: it’s great to be there, but you have no illusion about it being your home. Even as your lying on the beach or knocking back that third margarita, a part of you is thinking, “I kind of miss being home (the tonic).”

So when we hear the subdominant (vacation spot), we’re already thinking about getting home. Before too long, we’re on the ship or in the car on way home. That’s the dominant: you’re one step away from being home. When your ear hears a dominant chord, it’s saying “Yipee. We’re almost home. Just one chord away.”

How do we find the dominant chord? There are two that can function as dominant, whether the music you’re hearing is in a minor or major key center. Chords that function as dominants are built on the fifth (V) and seventh (vii) degree of the major or minor scale.

Example: get your guitar and play a G7 followed by a C. The G7 is the V chord in the key center of C major.

There’s another chord in C major that can serve as a dominant, but you might not know it. It’s Bm7b5, the vii in C major. Here’s a pattern for it: X, 3, 2, 3, 2, X. These are fret numbers, reading from left to right, highest pitch E string to low E string.

Play that Bm7b5 chord, then follow it with the C major. See how much like G7 it sounds? As we’ve done with the other chord types, let’s compare the notes of the two dominant types:

G7 has G B D F

Bm7b5 has B D F A

Three out of four notes in common — no wonder they can serve the same function. They’re practically the same chord.

Practical uses? The next time you come across a G7 while playing a tune, try playing Bm7b5 instead. Or, if you’re writing a tune and want a darker feeling than what the G7 provides, use Bm7b5.

Copyright © 2007 Darrin Koltow

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News - August 1, 2005 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

Big Picture of Making Music Series

• The Big Picture of Making Music
• The Subdominant Chord

Back to the Big Picture of making music: the viewpoint that gives you an understanding of how music works. The last installment talked about key centers: the all-important concept that drives Western music. And we looked at the three principal characters in this drama: the tonic, the subdominant and the dominant.

Please see the last entry for more background info, including what the tonic chords are. If you’re already lost, keep this in mind. The point that there are not bazillions of chords you need to know to make music, there are only three — tonic, dominant and subdominant. Discovering this for yourself is like having each dollar in your wallet turn into a $50. Okay, enough rehash. We’re into the subdominant. What is its function? Heck, what is it? The subdominant type of chord is the chord that says, “Not so fast, my pretties. I know you want to reach the mellow and restful tonic chord. But you have to get through me first. I have the same basic sound as the tonic, but when you hear me, you know you’re not ‘home’ yet. You’ve only arrived at a pit stop.”

Yes, the subdominant is kind of a friendly nemesis to the tonic chord. When you hear it, you hear the music wanting to move somewhere else. Let’s see this in action. Get out your guitar, and play these chords in this order: C, Am, Dm, G7, F. Strum each chord twice. What did you feel when you finished playing? Kind of unresolved, right? Like there needed to be something else. That’s because we ended this micro ditty on a subdominant chord, not a tonic chord.

Let’s get more specific. Which degrees of the major scale have the subdominant chords? Just two: the ii and the IV. (Nothing special about these Roman numerals. Using them is just an indicator that we’re talking about parts of the major scale, and not, say, the beats within a measure of music.)

The ii and the IV, when translated into an actual key, (C major in this example), yields these chords: Dm and F. For a quick sanity check, look at the subdominant chords in the key of F major: Gm and Bb.

Next important point is one already covered in the last tip: you can (often) swap one subdominant chord for another. So the next time you’re playing a tune in C major, and the tune calls for an F major chord, try playing a Dm (or Dm7) instead.

A bit of detail here: If it’s true we can swap these chords, they ought to sound fairly similar, correct? Let’s look at the notes in each: Dm: D F A. F major: F A C. Good: two notes in common out of three. Now, dig this: Dm7: D F A C, and F6: F A C D. Same notes. In one sense, they are the same chord. So you know they are interchangeable.

Next time we’ll look at the dominant.

Copyright © 2007 Darrin Koltow

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News - July 15, 2005 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

Big Picture of Making Music Series

• The Big Picture of Making Music
• The Dominant Chord

This tip is about the Big Picture of making music. What is that? It’s the mental model that helps you understand how music works. Without that, then scales, chords and maybe even songs will make no sense to you. So let’s answer some fundamental questions about the Big Picture of music and see if it helps you untie some mental knots you’ve made for yourself.

All you need to do to see the Big Picture of music is to understand this: key centers. If you understand how key centers are made, moved into and out of, and how chords work within key centers, then you can fit anything new you learn — chords, scales, songs, fruitcake recipes — into your brain, and it will be a joy to learn.

So what is a key center? Get out your guitar. Play a Dm, followed by a G7, followed by C major. You just established a key center of C. If you sing or play the note C, it sounds like the most restful note, doesn’t it?

The next question is how do those three chords work to create a key center? Let me defer that question for now, and offer instead an encouraging statement: there are only three actual chords in any key center. Say what? Three chords? “I was told there are 7,” you say: you know, one for each note in the scale. Yes, that’s true. But for the purposes of *establishing a key center*, there are only three chords — or actually, three *types* of chords.

Watch out now: when I write, “type of chord” I’m not talking about a chord’s *quality*: major, minor, diminished, polka-dot, etc. No, “type” refers to one of these: tonic, subdominant, and dominant. Let’s explain these, and relate them to some actual chords.

The tonic type of chord is the one that represents the key center itself. It sounds more or less restful and says, “We can just hang here. No need to go anywhere else.” It’s important to note that you will have a true “Tonic,” which is the key center, and other “tonics” that can serve as representatives, or substitutes for the true key center. The true Tonic (note the capital “T”) is the first degree of the major scale. But tonic chords (note the little “t”) in any major key are found on degrees One, Three and Six.

Translate these to C major. The C major chord is the Tonic chord. But the Three and Six, Em and Am, are also tonic. This leads us to the next Big Observation about key centers:

You can often swap out one chord for another if the chords perform the same function (tonic, subdominant, dominant). That means in C major, the chords C major, A minor, and E minor are interchangeable.

“Objection!” someone yells. “I’ve tried that before and it sounded worse than fingernails on chalkboards.” So to that we say this: this stuff about tonic, subdominant and dominant is a part of music *theory*. And you did notice the word “often” back in the sentence starting with “You can often…” Often doesn’t means always.

Back to the point, and how to apply it. The next time you’re playing a tune in C major, try swapping around the Em, Am and C.

Am has two of the same notes as the C chord, C and E. In essence you’ve created a C6 chord, which is C, E, G and A, but without the G. This is why Am7 (made up of A, C, E and G) is an even better substitute tonic than just plain old Am.

But what about Em? While it also has two of the notes of the C chord (E and G), it doesn’t have the C and missing the root can sometimes seem a little jarring. But when you’re playing in a band, you often have a bassist or keyboard player who’s playing the root. And when we add the root C to the rest of the Em chord, we get C, E, G and B, which is Cmaj7.

C6 and Cmaj7 have jazzier flavors than your normal C chord, which is why they don’t “always” fit in with the mood of a particular song. But quite “often” they will. When? Well, that’s a matter of both personal taste and experimentation.

So take some time and experiment with tonic substitutions and next time out we’ll discuss the subdominant.

Copyright © 2007 Darrin Koltow

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News - July 1, 2005 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

Big Picture of Making Music Series

• The Subdominant Chord
• The Dominant Chord