For most guitarists, the process for learning to solo and improvise involves a mix of learning guitar scales and solos written by other guitarists.
If you do this enough, your ears will help you fill in the rest, like timing and choosing which notes to play when.
But what if your notes are sounding too random? What if they don’t feel like they fit the chords you’re soloing over?
Fear not, for music theory is once again here to the rescue! In this article we’re going to look at using chord tones, which are the notes that a chord is made up of, to make your solos sound more cohesive with the chords you’re playing over.
This is closely related to using arpeggios to solo, but good fretboard knowledge will also get you through if you want to stick to using scales.
What are Chord Tones?
Chord tones are just the notes that the chord is made from.
For example, a C Major chord has the notes C - E - G in it, so those three notes are the chord tones.
A9, for comparison, has the notes A - C# - E - G - B in it, so those five notes are the chord tones.
In general, if you play a chord tone at the same time as the chord, it’s going to sound more consonant (safe, nice, correct) than if you play a note that isn’t a chord tone.
Which Chord Tones are the best ones to play?
Not all chord tones are created equal. The fun part of improvising is you can highlight a particular part of a chord by playing that chord tone to make it sound more pronounced.
Let’s look at a simple example - an A Minor chord (with the notes A - C - E).
My three options are:
Play the Root Note (A)
Play the Minor Third (C)
Play the Perfect Fifth (E).
If I choose to play an A, I’m going to reinforce the bass line - generally the safest, strongest option. But it can also be the most boring!
If I choose to play a C, I’m going to reinforce the minor sound of the chord, making it sound more “minor” than it perhaps otherwise would. Again, a safe option, but it may be slightly more interesting depending on the context than the root alone.
Finally, playing the E, the fifth, will sound a little less safe than the root note, but won’t emphasise any particular sound - the fifth is common to most chords, so it’ll work in most situations without emphasising any one part of the chord too much.
But hang on, you might ask, if they all sound safe and boring, why would I play them?
The answer is to not treat the chord tones as the ONLY notes to play, but to treat them as target tones - notes to aim for in between your more dissonant notes and creative stuff!
How to Target the Chord Tones
By target tones, we mean notes to musically aim for as destinations for your solo ideas.
Let’s use an example of using an A Natural Minor scale to solo over an Am chord.
If I decide my target tone is going to be the root of the chord (A), but I’m currently playing a D, I can just play through the scale notes until I hit A and stop there (D - E - F - G - A).
I might land on the A at the start of the bar, right on the chord change, but that’s not always the best choice - maybe I want to anticipate by coming in half a beat early, or just finish my run after a beat or two because it sounds more interesting.
You don’t just have to go up and down the scale to get to the target tone, but you’ll usually want to do it musically so it doesn’t sound like a random jumble of notes. Some other strategies could be:
Ladder up or down the scale until you hit the target tone (e.g. I might go D - F - E - G - F - A, which involves jumping up in thirds through the scale).
Enclose the target tone (e.g. D - B - G - A, which means hitting the two notes either side of the target tone before landing on it).
In reality, there are lots of ways you could target the note (it’s a creative process after all!) but the main point is that you are trying using that note to guide your soloing, rather than playing anything.
Now, your Chord Tones will go from sounding like boring notes to really momentous resolutions to your licks, perfectly lined up with the chords you’re playing over!
What if I don’t know which notes I’m playing?
Don’t worry, I know most guitarists (myself included) aren’t thinking about the name of every single note they play when they solo! But, you should still be able to work out which notes you are playing with a bit of thinking.
The easiest place to start is to identify all instances of the target tone in your particular position, scale or shape. For example, let’s say I’m playing an A Minor Pentatonic Scale and want to target A. All I need to do is play through the scale and stop at each of the A notes to remember where they are located.
If you’re not comfortable with the fretboard, feel free to use cheat sheets or fretboard diagrams to help out, but you’ll find this process will help expand your practical fretboard knowledge too (so no need to work on the fretboard THEN work on target tones - do them at the same time).
Note names vs interval names
The only problem with the above approach is that you’ll need to do that for EVERY target tone you want to use, which can be time-consuming.
Another way to name the notes is by their scale degrees, which can be handy for movable shapes.
For example, let’s say I’m playing through an A Natural Minor scale, which has the notes:
A - B - C - D - E - F - G
I could also think of these notes as being:
1 - 2 - b3 - 4 - 5 - b6 - b7
Now, if I was to use the A Natural Minor scale over an Am chord, and decide to target the b3 of C, I can just remember where the b3 is instead of thinking of it as C. This is handy, because now, whenever I want to find another minor chord’s b3, I can play its natural minor scale and I should already know where the b3 will be, as it’ll be the same spot in the scale or arpeggio shape.
The downside to this approach? It means you have to change scale when the song changes chords, which might not be very practical! So, eventually, you’ll want to use both methods, knowing the notes on the fretboard and knowing the intervals in your scales and arpeggios - just start with the one that makes more sense to you as they’re both valid in different situations.
Using Target Tones in your solos
The key to using target tones in your playing is to start simply. Just try to land on the root notes for each chord. Remember, your ears will help - you don’t necessarily need to use fretboard knowledge if you can hear that it’s the root already!
Keep doing this for the same chord progression until it feels easy, then try another one, and another.
You can then move on to finding other chord tones, like thirds, fifths or even sevenths and extensions, but it should never feel like a difficult process if you are properly limiting yourself (e.g. only use target tones for one chord of the chord progression, or only focus on one chord tone first).
The end result will be solos that sound much more in synch with the chords you’re playing over, and a much better understanding of your fretboard, note choices and intervals!