The power of chord tones

Let's face it: what all of us twangers (and any other instrumentalist) REALLY want to be able to do is improvise. To be able to invent your part as you go, in real time, by ear, and to have it sound right all the time, has to be the ultimate goal of anyone who has ever played an instrument. It really is proof, somehow, that you've mastered your instrument and that you are totally familiar with the workings of music. To those who have yet to understand how this freedom can be achieved, it must seem like magic. I know it did to me.

If you've been to my site before, you'll know how much I HATE scales, modes, and anything to do with that linear way of thinking. Until the advent of the Internet, I really had no idea that improvisation is pretty well universally seen as a technique based on scales and modes. The pentatonic, in particular, is touted as the key to improvisation. I don't think I have EVER, in my 43 years of playing, thought "pentatonic". I truly wouldn't know where to begin, thinking along those lines.

I can't remember quite when it was that I started to understand that CHORDS are the holders of strong melodies, not scales. Chords, by their very existence within a piece of music, dictate the melodic possibilities. Sure, you can argue that chords come from scales, so therefore you should know your scales, but to be thinking scales in a chordal environment is to be cluttering the landscape with too much information. Chords crystallizes scales into the moment, into time.

I have a couple of different improvisation examples at this site, but in this one, I took great care in sticking exclusively to CHORD TONES*, those notes within the chord, for the entire improvised melody. Every note of every one of those phrases is a chord tone. The melodic lines keeps taking the right turn when the 'outside the key chords' come into play. How could they not? The chord tones keep showing me where to go. Here is a midi of the progression, which is basically "Georgia".

... and here is the progression:

| D . . . | C#m . F#7 . | Bm . Bm7 . | G . Gm7 . | D . B7 . | Em . Em/A . | C9-5 . B9 . | E9 . A13 . | D . . . |

A long time ago, I realized that good melodies, ones that were pleasing to the ear, relied on chord tones for their meanderings. Almost totally. I listened very carefully to music I liked and, armed with a self taught visualization technique (the subject of my book PlaneTalk), I analyzed it. What I found was that 'melody' is a collection of phrases, strung together; those phrases used chord tones as launch and resolve notes. More often than not, that's all the melody is, like the one here. If any other notes are needed, they're either one of the unused scale notes, or an 'in-between' chromatic note. Either way, they can be seen as 'passing notes', connecting notes used to get back to another chord tone. Home, sweet home.

So, the trick is, follow those chords around the fretboard. As they change, the configuration of your chord tones change, your home-sweet-home keeps shifting around, but no matter where it goes, you're phrases are right there with it, and your melody emerges, strong and right. Of course, you're already hearing it in your head, choosing which way to go, which chord tone to head for.

Of course, being able to see the entire neck as chord tones for any and all chords is no mean feat. It's easy enough to look at a C chord, for example, remember the pattern and then play each note in random sequence ... but what about all the other C chords further up the neck? Or what if it's a G#m7 chord? How do you instantly see it all over the fretboard? Or a Bbmaj7?

A good mental fretboard map is what is needed. PlaneTalk is the most user friendly way, in this Universe anyway, of learning that map, a visualization technique that is simple beyond belief but one that will become the most powerful tool in your twanger's arsenal, a true fretboard friend that will never let you down, and that will allow you to NEVER THINK SCALES again.