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Lead playing boils down to two things... 1) The notes we choose. 2) How we play those notes. The second part is what musicians often call "feel" - that special quality beyond mere pitch. But sometimes it's not just about the note itself. It's about how we approach it. This lesson focuses on one powerful approach technique called chromatic approach. It can breathe life into even the simplest, flatt...
Chromatic Approach - Breathing Life Into Flat Phrases
Apr 16, 2026
174 views
It's useful to spend some time on individual tones/intervals and how they interact with chords. Some intervals, like this one, have a rather special function. In this lesson (an excerpt from my Chord Connections course ), we look specifically at the 4th (long name, perfect fourth ) over major chords. The 4th is typically considered a "passing tone" over major (e.g. a major triad or maj7). It funct...
Building The 4th Bridge
Feb 25, 2023
508 views
Pentatonic scales can be seen as a form of omission. That is, we omit tones from the fuller, seven-tone (or heptatonic) scales to which they're native. This omission of tones serves a key purpose that often goes unmentioned - to help us forge different melodic/phrasing pathways through a scale and over related chords. While the standard major and minor pentatonic scales were, for most of us, initi...
How Many of These Pentatonic Scales Do You Know?
Nov 09, 2022
856 views