Professor Shred: 12-Step

Program Using Chromatic

Passing Tones to Add Color to
Your Soloing Ideas
I am often asked how I incorporate chromatic notes into my solos
and how I approach playing outside the given key center of a
song.
If you have ever used the blues scale, then you have already
employed chromatic notes in some of the most musical ways
possible.
FIGURE 1 shows the A minor pentatonic scale. To get the A blues
scale, we simply add Eb, the flatted fifth (f5), as shown in FIGURE
2.
Now, that Eb can sound like the worst note in the worldif you
land on it and stop, youll be hurting peoplebut most of us use it
as a passing tone, as I do in four spots in FIGURE 3: in the key of
A, at the end of bar 1, I slide from Eb up to E, the fifth, which is a
nice solid chord tone, and in bar 2, I move from beat one to beat
two by sliding down from Eb to D, the fourth.
I use the same concept into beat four and on beat one of the next
bar. Here, I use the b5 as an ornament to add funkiness to the
lines. If you can employ this concept successfully, in theory you
know everything you need to know in order to use any one of the
12 notes as a passing tone at any pointas long as you use it
responsibly. The safest approach is to follow every jarring, passing
note with a good note that sits close by melodically.
Moving into a chord tone immediately justifies the jarring note you
played right before it. Its also important that the good notes land
rhythmically on the more important parts of the beat or groove.
Lets go back to A minor pentatonic and simply fill in the gaps
between the scale tones with most of the available passing tones,
as I do in FIGURES 4 and 5. You can also go back to basics and
start with chord tones only. FIGURE 6a shows the triadic chord
tones for C major: C, G and E, played through three octaves.
FIGURE 6b shows how to add the chromatic approach note, or
lower neighbor, one half step below each chord tone. FIGURE 7
illustrates a typical way to use this concept in a swinging, bluesy
line. This approach can be heard in well-known songs like
Politician by Cream, and Henry Mancinis The Pink Panther.
When people talk about playing outside, its often just a broader
approach to creating lines. Instead of a wrong note followed by a
right note, its often the wrong key followed by the right key. In
FIGURE 8, I play a long line based around B minor, using as many
passing tones as possible but ending up squarely back in B minor.
If you can get lost without traveling too far away and then land on
your feet, youve done a successful job at weaving chromaticism
into a solo phrase. The key is to keep your ears wide open and
dont be afraid to explore uncharted musical waters.