(guitar playing)
- Hi everybody. My name is Jens Larsen.
In this video, I'm gonna
show you three ways
that you can take some
really simple music theory
and turn that directly into guitar licks.
So, if you know what a major scale is,
what a pentatonic scale is,
and how to find the third of a chord,
then you can use all three of the ideas
that I'm gonna go over in this video.
The first idea is to use
the arpeggio from the third of the chord.
So, I'm gonna do all my
examples in the key of C major
and I'm gonna use two different
chords to demonstrate them.
So, I'm gonna use the D minor seven chord
and the C major seven chord.
If we take a D minor seven,
you probably know already that
if you're playing over
a D minor seven chord,
you can use a D minor seven arpeggio.
So it'll be this arpeggio:
And you can also look at the
third from this arpeggio,
so that's an F
and then take the arpeggio
that's following that.
And in this case that's an F major seven.
If you compare those two arpeggios,
then you'll see that the
D minor seven is D F A C
and the F major seven is F A C E.
So they're actually the same
notes except for one thing.
In the first one, we have the root, the D.
And in the second one,
we don't have a root
but we have the ninth, which is an E.
So we're pretty much
playing the same notes.
We just added an extension.
So that's a nice way
to get some more colors
into our lines
and a line with that
might sound like this:
In this line, I'm starting with
the F major seven arpeggio.
And then I'm running down
And then up again in the D minor scale,
something that we'll get to in a bit
and from there, I then repeat
the F major seven arpeggio.
And then ending on the nine
to really emphasize that.
If we do the same with
the C major seven chord,
then we get from the
C major seven arpeggio
and then the third, which is an E.
And then we have an E
minor seven arpeggio.
So again, the C major seven
arpeggio is C E G and B
and the E minor seven is E G B and D.
So we're playing the same
notes except we have a nine,
instead of the root.
A line with this could
sound something like this:
So in this line, I'm
mixing up a lot of things.
The first part of the line is
actually straight out of the
A minor pentatonic scale,
which of course works really well
and it's all the C major pentatonic scale,
so it works well on a C major seven.
And the second part is, first
the C major seven arpeggio
and then an E minor seven arpeggio.
And then really bringing out
the nine at the end again.
Whenever you learn something new,
it's really important that
you also try to incorporate it
so that you can use it together
with all the other
things you already know.
So it shouldn't be so that
if you learn something new,
then it's isolated and
you can only use that.
You really wanna mix it
with all the other things
that you use when playing over a chord.
And that goes for this, as well.
So you wanna use both the C major seven
and the E minor seven arpeggio.
The second idea is that
whenever we have a minor seven arpeggio,
we can also use the
minor pentatonic scale.
So if we look at a D minor
seven arpeggio, D F A C,
and D minor pentatonic, that's D F G A C,
so they're the same notes except
in the pentatonic scale we also have a G.
But that sounds just
fine on a D minor chord,
so like this.
A line using the minor pentatonic scale
could sound something like this:
You wanna mix everything up that you know.
So, I'm just starting with
the F major seven arpeggio
because now we have
that in our vocabulary.
Then I'm descending down
the minor pentatonic scale,
skipping down.
And then I'm doing this
exercise in playing,
it's kinda like playing the
minor pentatonic scale in
diatonic triads because we get, first,
the stack of fourths from D
and then the F major triad,
ending on the root.
So let's try and use the same
approach on the C major seven.
So the C major seven
arpeggio is, of course,
not a minor seven arpreggio.
But the arpeggio from the third E,
which is an E minor seven arpeggio is:
And that means that we can actually use
the E minor pentatonic scale.
That would be this one:
A line using the E minor pentatonic scale
over a C major chord
could sound something like this:
I'm just starting first again, with
a line coming straight of
the E minor seven arpeggio
and then we get this line
on the E minor pentatonic.
So using this, sort of stack of 4ths
and ending on the nine of the C major.
The third idea is to use leading notes.
So, we already have the
D minor seven arpeggio.
And before each of the notes,
we can actually add a leading
note a half step below.
So that would be this:
This is not the kinda
thing where you wanna
add all of them all the time
but you want to use them a
little bit more sparingly.
So, use, put a leading note
in front of one of the
arpeggio notes once in a while.
That could sound like this:
I'm starting on the third,
then I'm adding a leading
note onto the root.
And then just up the pentatonic scale,
down the arpeggio, then
another leading note,
this time for the seventh.
And then, using the
arpeggio from the third,
so that's an F major seven arpeggio.
And then down to the root
and then ending on the fifth.
If we do the same for the C major seven,
so we have the C major
seven arpeggio here.
And then adding leading
notes would give us:
And a line with that could
be something like this:
I'm using lead note for the third
and then I'm just running
up the minor seven arpeggio.
So the E minor seven
then another pentatonic fragment,
leading note for the seventh,
then down the major seven arpeggio,
and then ending on the ninth.
As you can tell,
I'm really mixing and
using all the three ideas
in the examples for this video.
I think you really wanna work on that.
You wanna incorporate
everything new you learn
and use it alongside all
the other things that you already know.
So that it really becomes
a part of your playing.
If you wanna check out
more stuff on jazz guitar,
learning some new arpeggios,
how to use pentatonic
scales over extended chords,
and chord voicings,
then subscribe to my channel.
I publish a new lesson every Thursday
and I've been doing it for
some time, already now.
So there's already a lot of
videos, a lot of material,
on my channel.
If you wanna get a notification
whenever I upload a new video,
or a vlog or a backing track,
then press the little bill icon
that's next to the subscribe button.
That's also a huge
support for the channel.
That's about it for this week.
Thank you for watching
and on to next week.
