Tone Free

Freeing yourself from harmonic limitations

When most guitarists reach a certain level of proficiency, they tend to play (and rely on)
ideas they're most comfortable with. As a result, they often fall into creative ruts. One
possible consequence of creative complacency is that practice sessions start becoming
warm-ups-effective for maintaining the guitarist's chops and little else. I've always
contended that to keep growing as a guitarist (and a musician), you must practice what
you don't know rather than what you do know. Now I don't mean that you should abandon
your style or learn things you have no interest in playing, but in order to become better,
you should make an effort to challenge yourself both technically and harmonically.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. It's also something I've been dealing with
lately in my own playing.

As you might know, even though I use color tones to embellish my lines, my playing is
firmly rooted in the pentatonic scale. Actually, I'm pretty hung up on the pentatonic scale-
to the point where lately I've been feeling that I've been relying on it just a bit too much.
Now that doesn't mean I want to change my style or my sound-I love the power of the
pentatonic scale, and I've come up with what I feel is a unique slant on it. But at the same
time, I want to learn more about applying other scales to chord progressions. So now,
whenever I pick up my guitar to practice, I consciously try to get out of the pentatonic
scale mindset.

One of the things that's helping me break out of the pentatonic "rut" is to work on how to
play over "changes," that is, chords in a progression that might not necessarily all be in
the same key. I tried to accomplish this on "Manhattan" (Venus Isle), specifically over the
Ebm7-C7-Fm7-Bb7 progression (see Figure 1).

Since I feel that cooler-sounding chords inspire me to play better, the first thing I worked
on was spicing up the basic i-VI-ii-V progression with color tones such as the ninth and
the eleventh, and altered tones such as the raised ninth and raised fifth. The resulting
progression is depicted in FIGURE 2. Notice that even though the fundamental harmony
is the same, the voicings in FIGURE 2 sound richer and more interesting than their basic
counterparts in FIGURE 1.
The beauty of the i-VI-ii-V change is that it's harmonically flexible-it's simple enough that
you can play a minor-pentatonic scale throughout the whole progression (in this case, the
Eb minor pentatonic), but also complex enough that if you wanted to hit the changes with
different scales, you could.

Since I've already done the minor pentatonic thing on many songs, I tried to come up
with different ideas to play over each chord on "Manhattan." FIGURE 3 provides one
possible solution. I decided to start off by playing an Eb minor hexatonic (Eb-F-Gb-Ab-
Bb-Db) line over the Ebm7 chord. A minor hexatonic scale is just a minor pentatonic with
an added note-I usually add the second (ninth). Over C7#9, I played a straight Eb minor
pentatonic scale, adding a bluesy bend. I opted for the F minor hexatonic (F-G-Ab-Bb-C-
Eb) over the Fm7 chord. Again, the ninth (G) proves to be a powerful color tone.

I wanted to create an altered dominant sound over the Bb7#5#9-one that would add
tension to the progression and make the ensuing resolution to the tonic (Ebm) more
pronounced. To that end, I decided to use a bit of substitution-I played the B major scale
starting on the seventh degree (A# [Bb]) over Bb7#5#9. Modal players might look at this
scale as Bb Locrian, but I simply see it as one of many Bb altered dominant scales. If you
analyze the notes of the B major scale in relation to the Bb7#5#9 chord, you'll see that it
contains all the "hip" altered tones: B=lowered ninth, C#=raised ninth, D#=third,
E=eleventh, F#=raised fifth, G#(Ab)=lowered seventh and A#(Bb)=root.
Let me stress that the approach I took in FIGURE 3 is just one of many possible ones-
you are by no means limited to my choices. For example, try playing the Bb altered
dominant scale (Bb-Cb-Db-D-E-Gb-Ab) over the Bb7#5#9 chord or the Eb Dorian scale
over Ebm. Experiment. And if there's one thing I can leave you with, it's to use anything
and everything you've learned from others as a springboard for your own creativity. See
you later!