It’s Hot Outside is a weekly video
Video Guitar Lesson
Tab & Notation
In this 3rd installment of my “It’s Hot Outside” blog, we really stretch out a bit to include 9th’s, 11th’s, and 13th’s into our outside the box soloing ideas. 5 licks are featured in the video and they are all transcribed. Each lick illustrates how a player in any genre, can genuinely spice up their soloing, show depth, and grab their listener’s ear!
If you’re not familiar with the 9, 11, or 13 let me explain this concept: We can trace everything in our culture melodically and harmonically back to the major scale. The scale consists of 7 different tones and has specific distances between each tone. These distances consist of semi-tones (half-step/1 fret) and tones (whole-step/2 frets).
For illustrative purposes we’ll denote the scale pattern with the “w” for the whole-step, and the “h” for the half-step. The major scale pattern progresses like so: wwhwwwh…easy enough. Another explanation can be the solfege or solfeggio: Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do. Each syllable represents a tone in the major scale. Notice that the scale begins with “Do” and ends with “Do”. That means the scale spans 1 octave, i.e. C to C. Each scale tone is numbered 1 (Do) through 7 (Ti), and the 8th tone represents the octave (Do). If we choose to surpass the octave, the 2nd, 4th, and 6th tones become the 9th, 11th and 13th.
In this lesson we demonstrate how to take the pentatonic box and inject these melodic ideas. These approaches add color and depth to an otherwise common melodic tool. Each lick also illustrates the marriage of the scale and the arpeggio in melody, a common practice among the great composers.
It’s Hot Outside is a weekly video