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Guitar Chord Scale
Relationships
Guitar scales built around chord
positions
As you learn more and more scales, you'll notice certain chord-scale
relationships immerge from the fretboard. Tones that are used in the
backing chords need to correspond with the tones in the scale(s) you're
playing, otherwise it'll clash.
It's therefore important to know what tones the backing chords are
using so you can highlight these same tones through your solo. There's
an easy way to find a "starting point" for your solo in this respect,
and that's what we'll be looking at in this lesson.
Identifying
a chord shape/scale pattern relationship
As a lead guitarist/soloist, you must be able to identify the chords
you'll be playing over. This is an "ear skill" that will come with
time, but I'm assuming that you'll at least be aware of the chord
sequence you'll be playing over, whether you're improvising or writing
a lead part at home/in the studio.
To begin with, let's look at examples one chord at a time.
Let's say your solo begins on a D major chord, and you wanted to apply
a major scale phrase over this chord.
The first thing to do is locate a potential shape for this D major
chord. As there are several main shapes for this chord (based on those
5 barre/movable chord shapes) we
should at this stage just pick one and run with it...
D major chord
shape
This is one major chord shape you should know. It's the basic A form
major barre chord. Rooted
at fret 5 gives us D major.
Now, when learning scales, it's important to learn their boxed
patterns on the low E string and A string root notes, for the
very reason that it gives you a good starting point for your solo over
chord shapes like the above...
D major scale
shape
We've simply superimposed the A string scale pattern we know right over
the A form chord shape we know.
In fact, you only really need to identify the corresponding root notes,
as this is the point from which both the chord and scale shapes are
built.
However, we can also see a chord scale relationship between the 3rd and 5th tones
used in both the major chord and the major scale. We could use these
tones as starting notes if we wished.
So that's the basic idea. Identify a possible chord shape for the chord
you're playing over and build a scale pattern in the same position.
Again, it helps a great deal if you learn the main boxed patterns for
each scale (that's why I include them in my guitar
scale lessons!)
You can then move your solo onwards from this starting position. Again,
I provide lessons on expanding out of boxed patterns for each scale.
Now, I could give you a hundred examples of this same process with
different chords and scales, but the concept is the same
whichever chord-scale relationship you use.
For example:
A flat minor
added 9th (Abmadd9) chord shape
So first we establish that the above is a minor chord. But
there is also an added tone (the 2nd/9th) that we could (if we want)
highlight in our solo. There is more than one minor scale that will
work over this chord, but for this example I'm using Dorian...
A flat Dorian
scale shape
Again, notice how we can use our knowledge of the root note
position of the chord shape and correspond it with a boxed scale
pattern that uses the same
root note position. We now have a solid starting point for
our A flat Dorian phrase/solo.
If in doubt, at first, start on the root note and work through the rest
of the pattern from there. Eventually, you'll be able to identify other
tones that reside in the scale pattern and start on those (e.g. the b3,
5, 2 etc.).
In a later lesson, we'll look at how this technique can help us solo
over chord changes. For now, make sure you reference this lesson when
learning individual scales. It really is a great way to find your
bearings at first.
If you have any questions about chord-scale relationships, don't
hesitate to ask!
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