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Soloing over non-blues progressions

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 5:57 pm
by Ulysses
Do you guys practice this? I find myself mostly practicing standard 12 bar and 8 bar blues progressions, 80% of the time. I need a little bit of thinking before playing over different progressions to figure out where I'm comfortable playing on the fretboard.

Do you guys practice improvising over different chord progressions? Should I start doing it?

Re: Soloing over non-blues progressions

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:04 pm
by 12bar
For my youtube videos I usually record a chord progression (what ever fits or comes to mind) and then I try to improvise over it, but on a very low level musically :big_smile: ...

Re: Soloing over non-blues progressions

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:30 pm
by fenson
Must try I VI II V progression... let's say jazzy Blues :D
Tired of the Pentatonic ? Mix it with other scales... Diminished, double diminished, let's play outside of the Pent as for exemple have a look @ this vid:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCAK5vQU8NY>.
The I IV V chord progression might be "boring" when simply played using the seven Dominant chord all the time... you may use inversion (first, second third inversion...), this helps to explore the fretboard...
You might like this too <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbfFBMrFIWo>...
Hope this helps

Re: Soloing over non-blues progressions

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 9:05 pm
by Ulysses
Thanks, I'll try that :D There's so many places you can go to with some of these progressions that it's exhausting to even think about, so I just want to use the blues scale for now just to train my ear and see what flows best. And also I want to work on my agility.

Re: Soloing over non-blues progressions

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 9:46 pm
by fenson
You might find this one interesting :icon_whoknows:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftgt0Ot0pc>
Hope this helps :D

Re: Soloing over non-blues progressions

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:50 pm
by VikingBlues
Way back I found that practising over non-blues progressions helped to expand my musical range, and also to suss out new scales.
I think it did help general fluency too.

So I would tend to seek out backing tracks that were in specific modes - Natural Minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Lydian.

If you know the minor and major pentatonic scales you're only two notes short each time of knowing any of those modes/scales I've listed.
e.g. Dorian - any part of the Minor Pentatonic scale that has 3 frets between two notes, the note nearest the higher of those two is the additional Dorian scale note. With Phrygian it's the ones nearest the lower note. Etc. Drag up a neck diagram of any of those scales and you'll see the Pentatonic notes are all there. Bringing in those additional two notes at the right points will really bring in the flavour / sound of the mode and make for very different music. Particularly with a mode that has such a strong flavour as Phrygian.
Modes aren't hard to play in if you ignore all the over-complicated theory that melts the brain into an inactive meltdown. Possibly a simplistic approach but I'm just a simple man and there's nothing wrong with simple music.

But hey-ho - I've rarely had takers for this general idea. :icon_whoknows: