I wanted to share a couple of tracks from a hard to find record By Allan Holdsworth and Gordon Beck. The Things You See . This album is absolutely a must for Allan’s fans. He plays mostly acoustic on this album and the musical level is second to none. Just listen to the first couple of seconds of ‘Diminished Responsibility’ and you’ll know what I mean.
Month: August 2010
Jazz guitar: Altered Chords Pt2
In this video I show how to use the Superlocrian mode (nothing more than the 7th mode of a minor melodic scale) to improvise over altered chords. On C7 the choice would be C Superlocrian C, Db,Eb,E, F#,G#,Bb (also known as Db melodic minor starting from C). Listen to a few examples of resolution from C7(alt) to F major and to F minor in the second part of the video.
Jazz guitar: Altered Chords Pt1
Altered chords are a flavour of dominant chords, where we add certain extensions: #9,b9,#5,b5. In the example on the video I use C7 as basic chord and add the extension D#,Db,G#,Gb also as combinations.
Larry Carlton lesson on Diminished scale
The last lesson I posted was about the Diminished scale…I stumbled onto this great video where guitar player guru Larry Carlton Talk about the diminished scale. He is one of my favourite guitarists of all times …if had to suggest any records, just check out ‘Sleepwalk’ or ‘Strike twice’ or any of his work with Steely Dan. Notice not only the notes he plays, but HOW he plays them…notice how sometimes he put a much more dramatic accent on notes that might sound ‘out’, like a b9, to make them stand out. Just listen to how he plays in the next video and notice the dynamic (soft/loud) and the way he attacks each note.