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Jazz & More Guitar Lessons: Block Chords: Harmonizing the Scale

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Jazz Advanced, Block Chords,
Harmonizing the Scale Part 1.

We're gonna show you a really
cool trick kind of a big

band arranger kind of thing
that you can use on guitar.

It's really useful when
playing a block chord solo or

when doing a chord melody arrangement.

For instance if we have
an A minor tonality and, and

versus A minor 6th this kind of sound, and

we have this melody A, and A, C, and E.

We can just do the inversions
of the minor 6 chord, and

if we have an F sharp too, if we have.

[MUSIC]
All right.

So A, E, C and F sharp.

[SOUND] A root on top.

Then we have third on top,

C, F sharp, E and A,

E, A, F sharp and C.

And F sharp C, A and E.

[MUSIC]
And

up all the way up if you wanna go here.

[MUSIC]

But what if we have these notes.

[MUSIC]
For the melody first.

A, B, and C.

What do we do for the A?

Should we do another version,
should we just [SOUND] Add the.

[SOUND] The 9th.

On top, instead of root [SOUND] Well,
this works, but

it doesn't sound very very interesting.

What we can do is add a dominant to,
to a dominant approach so

we're thinking that this,
that these are the target chords.

That A minor with the chord tones A, and
here we have another chord tone C on top.

Then we can approach A minor
with a dominant with the E7.

[SOUND]
Sounds great?

[SOUND]
Instead of.

[SOUND] This is more a more kind of you
had a movement here going all the way, so.

[SOUND]
You see all the four voices are moving.

So from A, you go up to B.

And this voice from, from,
from E going up to F.

And this one, C going up to D.

And this one,
from F sharp going up to G sharp.

So what we're doing here is doing kind of
E7 chord using the diminished voicing.

We got the E, other root.

We don't have to play it root.

And major 3rd, 7th, flat 9 and 5th.

[MUSIC]
The other

way works fine too approaching A.

[MUSIC]
And then if we have a melody going.

[MUSIC]
So what should we do there?

Just add the D?

We could, but we could also make
a movement with the voices and

do another inversion of E7.

So up here, D, G sharp, F, and B.

[MUSIC]
All right.

[SOUND]
Another dominant approach.

And this is a typical solution when
writing a, a big band arrangement.

Using these approach dominant approaches.

You can also do chromatic
approaches when you have the same.

[MUSIC]
The same, the same chord function.

The same chord voicing.

Static chord voicing moving around but
this is pretty cool.

[MUSIC]
So up here to this inversion.

E, A, F sharp, C.

[MUSIC]
Yeah.

All right.
And up here I can use,

since it's the 6th we can use the,

the original inversion.

[MUSIC]

Jazz Advanced,
Block Chords Harmonizing the Scale Part 2.

Do another if we,
we'll have [SOUND] the G sharp.

That's a melody note.

Could use another version,
[SOUND] a version of E7.

G sharp on top.

B and E.

And I mean F, the flat 9.

[SOUND] You could also do it with
[MUSIC]

you know, instead [SOUND] of a flat 9,

[SOUND] the natural 9 [SOUND] but
I like this [SOUND] sound more.

It's, it's good to know both.

[MUSIC]
You want to do,

then it will be basically just
inversions of E, B minor 9.

[SOUND] As you can see E7 and B minor 9.

[SOUND] Similar shapes.

[MUSIC]
That works fine too.

It's good to know both, but here.

G sharp, D, B, and F and.

[SOUND] So now we can actually play around
[MUSIC]

with the scale.

[MUSIC]
As you can see,

it's an A melodic minor scale.

[MUSIC]
But

we are using these E7
[MUSIC]

flat 9.

Voicings in between
[MUSIC]

gives this a kind of a harmonic minor

sound.

[SOUND]
We could also do,

follow the harmonic minor scale and

do F [SOUND] B [SOUND] G sharp [SOUND] and
D.

[MUSIC]
You hear the difference?

[MUSIC]
Compared to.

[MUSIC]
Or if you wanna do this, just.

[MUSIC]

[LAUGH] Follow the.

[MUSIC]
D E, E9 shapes instead.

[MUSIC]

So.

[MUSIC]
It would sound like this to improvise

a little bit around this.

[MUSIC].

[MUSIC]

Now we're

doing F7,

that can

turn around

E7 flat

9, and,

and A.

You could also start doing chromatic

approaches using
[MUSIC]

using the same structure and

move it a little bit around back and
forth.

That will give you even more
freedom while creating melody.

[MUSIC]
So

try it out and you can try this in
in the major, as well if you like.

You can try it out with a major scale.

[MUSIC]
And

see what,
what kind of voicings you would get.

Or if you prefer to do it with
these diminished voicings.

So practice this and
you can upload a video improvising.

Over on the melodic minor scale,
or the harmonic minor scale.

Or you just, do as I did it here
at the end, mixing it together.

And you will be able to make kind
of a big band block chord sounding,

a chord solo on this bar.

And you can also try it,
different positions.

I mean this, this one right here.

Looks like that here, so,
now I was just showing you the upper,

upper, upper voicings.

But here
[MUSIC]

you can continue this same,

same way doing the, the,
the minor, minor 6 chords.

Just the same notes,
just different inversions.

Cool, thank you.

[MUSIC]

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