-----------9----------7--------------------------------- (thin e)
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Looking at this months guitar technique magazine, i found this lick, to be used in the turnaround of blues in A over the e chord (and then moved back 2 frets and played over the d chord).
my confusion is that the book says that this is an E9 chord - and that when it is moved back 2 frets it is a D9 chord.
when i look at the notes, this lick contains a C# which is a prominant note the way it is played - and i know a c# isnt in an E9 chord. i just cant get the notes to add up??
however, it does sound right when i play it, which is good, but i really need to know the theory behind calling it an E9 - i figure the writers of gutiar technique know a lot more than me, so unless its a misprint, it cant be wrong. :oops:
"I like to play that guitar. I have to stare at it while I'm playing it because I'm not very good at playing it."
Noel Gallagher (who took the words right out of my mouth)
It's common for many guitarists to think that every note being played in a lick or riff is part of a given chord. But chords are supposed to be overall harmony and you can change that harmony by playing different "prominent" notes over the chord. Melodies do this all the time. If you'd playing a C chord, as am example, and the melody line goes from C to B to A, it's rare to see the chords change from C to Cmaj7 to C6 unless doing so is a deliberate part of the harmonic structure.
And when you think about it, guitarists don't really think that way because if they truly did, all solos would be chord arpeggios.
The other thing is that guitarists also often use chords as "positions" for licks and riffs. This particular riff is easily played when fretting an E9 chord (076777).
So if you take both of these thoughts into account, you can see why the folks who wrote the book did what they did. You can always think about the first part of the riff as being E 6/9 but in the long run you're much better off thinking of the C# as a "passing tone" that works out very nicely because it happens to be the sixth in the E major scale. It's a classic bit of combining both the major and minor pentatonic scales in order to create the sound of the blues.
Hope this helps.
Peace
thanks David - i see what you mean about it being played around the chord shape of an E9 - it makes much more sense now.
thanks!
"I like to play that guitar. I have to stare at it while I'm playing it because I'm not very good at playing it."
Noel Gallagher (who took the words right out of my mouth)
