How to Solo with Triads (aka. “Chord Tone Soloing” or “Soloing with Arpeggios”)

Video Cliffs:

0:00 – Intro Demo

0:59 – Lesson Introduction

2:29 – The Approach to Having the Chord Tones “Light Up” for You

10:35 – Breakdown/Analysis of the Intro Demo

15:28 – Final Words

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: 2 additional video backing tracks for practice

Each video is about 7 1/2 minutes long

The first video displays the F# natural minor scale fretboard diagram to solo over the backing track with

The second video is a “moving” fretboard diagram that has the chord tones within just a single position “light up” as the chords change. The progression goes around 8 times for each position to practice in





Soloing with Triads

I’ve made several other lessons talking about this concept. The one that most directly corresponds with this topic would be the lesson about How to Solo with Arpeggios.

Soloing with arpeggios, “chord tone targeting”, “soloing with triads”, etc. all mean the same thing. The idea is to focus on the underlying chords in the chord progression, rather than just paying attention to the overall key.

For example, the chord progression that was used in the demo from the video above uses the chords:

F#m – A – E – D

These 4 chords all come from the key of A major/F# minor:

Since the progression starts and ends on the F# minor chord, it is in the key of F# minor. Therefore, your overall soloing framework would be the F# minor scale.

Here is the F# minor scale spanned across the fretboard:

Many guitarists simply stop there and just use their ear to determine which notes sound the best over the chord sequence they are jamming over. Typically your ear will guide you towards the chord tones/triad notes/arpeggio notes as the ones that sound the best. The entire purpose of doing “chord tone targeting” exercises is to give you full control such that you can land on chord tones at will.

However, aside from that you can also do this little exercise to help you to learn how to effectively land on chord tones as the chord changes occur.

The Exercise

Take a chord progression such as:

F#m – A – E – D

Play it over and over for several minutes. Start out just playing open chords or barre chords.

After you get the rhythm and timing down with this progression, you would then want to start playing this chord progression further up the neck of the guitar using the various different CAGED shapes.

Here’s an example of how you might go about playing this progression between the 9th and 12th fret region, and within the context of the F# minor framework:

The F# minor chord can be found in the “Am-shape”:

The A major chord can be found in the “C-shape”:

The E major chord can be found in the “G-shape”:

The D major chord can be found in the “E-shape”:

Some of these chord shapes can be tricky to play, so if you want you can just play the high 3 or 4 strings. The idea is to simply play the progression over and over for several minutes straight using these CAGED shapes. You want to get yourself to the point where you are as familiar with these shapes as you are with the open chord shapes (assuming you are already familiar with those).

Once you familiarize yourself with the chord progression further up the neck, you would then want to start incorporating the scale tones “in between” the chord changes. Use the scale tones as your “path” to help you move from one chord shape to the next. Ideally, the chord shapes will “light up” to you as the chord changes occur, which is precisely the goal. Once that happens, you will have a much easier time improvising, while targeting chord tones in this one particular area of the fretboard.

After you get really good in one area of the the neck, try it in another area.

For instance, try it between the 13th and 17th fret area (which is where you will find your pentatonic position #1 for this key):

The F# minor chord can be found in the “Em-shape”:

The A major chord can be found in the “G-shape”:

The E major chord can be found in the “D-shape”:

The D major chord can be found in the “C-shape”:

You can do this exercise anywhere on the fretboard. I would suggest picking one chord progression and one 4 to 5-fret area at a time. Once you get really good in just that one area, move to another area. Ultimately, you want to get good at this over the entire fretboard. Once that happens, simply repeat the process for a different chord progression.

Try it for many different chord progressions, in several different keys. Before you know it, you will no longer be thinking in terms of “scale patterns” and “boxes”. Rather, you will be fluently soloing with chord tones, ultimately making your lead playing sound very connected with the rhythm section.

Have fun with it!