Chord Tone Soloing Series (Part 1) – Chord Tone Targeting Within the “Home Box”

Video Cliffs:

0:08 – Intro

7:35 – Musical Example #1 (strictly pentatonic)

9:54 – Musical Example #2 (diatonic, but disregarding chord tones)

12:25 – Musical Example #3 (targeting chord tones)

Extra Stuff for Full Access Members! In addition to everything else that is included with a Full Access Membership, many lessons include “Full Access Extras”.

Full Access Member “Video Backing Tracks” for this lesson: 3 video backing tracks for practice

Each video includes the backing tracks used in this video, along with full fretboard diagrams with the “home box” circled

1 video displays the pentatonic scale, 1 displays the diatonic scale, and 1 contains the diatonic scale while the chord tones “light up” as the chords change.

Each video is over 9 minutes long

This is one of HUNDREDS of chord tone target practice videos found in the member’s vault

Part 1 – Chord Tone Targeting Within the “Home Box“

I’ve talked about the importance of targeting specific chord tones of the underlying chord progression within your soloing/improvisation in these lessons:

Now I want to give you sort of a step-by-step process as to how you can begin to implement the concept of “Chord tone soloing/targeting” into your playing. Note that this isn’t just a jazz concept, although jazz guitarists are very much aware of the underlying chords within the progression at all times. This is a concept that all guitarists must eventually come to understand if they ever want to achieve full mastery over their playing.

Many guitarists, myself included, may get stuck at a plateau for many years in which they find themselves playing the same old scale licks over and over. They think that maybe they can watch YouTube and discover new scale-based patterns that they can use in their playing. Now while this certainly works, this approach generally tends to overlook the underlying chords that the rhythm section is playing. This results in the leads/solos/improvisations having a ‘disconnected’ sound from the chord progression. A guitar player that only thinks ‘scales’, while not concerning themselves with the underlying rhythm chords will almost inevitably end up hitting this plateau.

This specific plateau is generally the difference between a decent intermediate player, and a great player that comes to develop his or her own personal, unique style.

I’ve made several lessons that teach the “Scalar approach”

However, that is only the beginning…

This is the point that many guitarists end up getting stuck at for many years (sometimes forever).

Therefore, the question is not “what new scale patterns can I learn?”, rather it is:

“How can I learn how to always be aware of what the underlying chord within a progression is, and how can I get myself to become aware of all of the available chord tones in any given area or position of the fretboard in any key?”

…and that is the purpose of this chord tone soloing series.

It seems like an extremely daunting task considering there are an infinite combination of possibilities for a chord progression. However, once you begin digging in, you will begin to recognize patterns and similar sounds.

Just like the pentatonic scale will always have that “pentatonic sound” regardless of the key you are playing in, the same types of similarities occur when moving from one chord to the next.

For instance, you can have a I – V – vi – IV progression in the key of E, and it will still sound the same if you were to play it in A or D or F# or any other of the 12 keys. Therefore, your ear will begin to familiarize itself with similar chord movements.

In mainstream rock and pop music, you will find that there really are only a handful of common chord progressions used. The I – V – vi – IV progression alone is used in hundreds of well known popular songs!

So don’t worry that this may be too much for you to handle. If you are like me, and you have gotten extremely good at playing scales all up and down the neck using any or all of the “scale pattern methods” that I linked to above…Well, learning how to “target chord tones” is about equally as difficult of a task.

I personally am grateful that I learned the scalar methods first, because I look at this whole chord tone targeting thing to simply be just another layer added to my playing. On the other hand however, sometimes I wish I had just started out focusing on chord tones in the first place, since “scalar thinking” ultimately ended up becoming the direct cause of my several year plateau.

Whatever approach you decide to take, just understand that you will have to learn it all eventually ;).

Feel free to message me with any questions or comments on what else I may add to this series.

As always, have fun!