Using Outside Sounds in Your Playing
- The American Guitar Academy
- 11 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Using outside sounds in your playing seems extremely counter-intuitive at first, at least it did to me. You spend all of your time learning about scales and note choices, trying to play the right note at the right time, only to find out that playing the ‘wrong’ notes at the right time can be just as effective.
My recent blog post on the inimitable Robben Ford made me decide to create a short solo, showcasing some ways that you might hear myself, Robben Ford or other guitarists using outside sounds to create tension and release in their solos. You will have seen the short video (see the link below) that was a demonstration of the solo in question, and the longer video explaining the technical way to play the solo - this blog post is going to look at the theoretical side of things. The solo and accompanying scales will be available for download.
As a short disclaimer, this isn’t going to be a theory lesson, but rather a quick overview of what scales I used and where, perhaps you could then try them out and see how you feel, or what you can come up with. I am not going to go into the rhythm apart from when I think it is necessary, and minor pentatonic/natural minor phrasing will not be included. All of the material will be included in a Google Drive link at the end of this blog post.
Here is the solo performance link:
The Harmony
The chords for this track are a simple four bar loop: two bars of Am7, followed by a bar of D9. The last bar in the pattern is a Gsus13, with an Abdim being used as a passing chord back into the Am. If you are interested, the chord boxes for the voicings I used in the recording are shown below:
The D9 and the Gsus13 both function as dominant chords, so anything we would usually play over a dominant chord can be applied in the same way. The particular voicings of these chords were chosen for no particular reason other than they sounded good together. When I recorded the organ part, and the additional rhythm guitar parts, in this case called ‘chanks’ (an onomatopoeic term), I was more selective about the voicings I chose as they were playing a supporting role.
Outside Sounds
We use outside notes, chosen selectively, in order to give us a greater degree of tension and release. To anyone that knows what they’re talking about, a guitarist playing notes completely at random with no understanding of what they are doing really sticks out - there is a fine art to pulling this off.
There are endless approaches you can use, and you can almost get away with playing anything if you can justify it and resolve properly. The first instance of using an outside sound here is in bar 6 (or bar 4 if you’re not counting the two measures at the beginning). Over the Gsus13 chord, which as discussed functions the same as an ordinary dominant chord, we are playing a few notes from the G diminished scale (Fig. 1). The diminished scale comes in half-whole, or whole-half varieties, I used the former.
You could argue that this scale would be called another name, due to the confusing nature of diminished scales, but I will refer to it as ‘G diminished’ because we are starting from a G and playing over a chord rooted in G. Immediately following this, there is a chromatic line (Fig. 2) that brings the solo in line with the Am7 chord in a pleasing fashion.
It should be noted that this chromatic line starts on the ‘and’ of beat 3 and finishes on beat one of the next bar on the 12th fret of E, so I was targeting the E note as a chord tone of Am7.
Using chromatics to connect pleasing, consonant sounds is a great way to give your melodies an extra level of sophistication, though you should be careful to avoid making it sound like an exercise.
One of my favorite scales, something I took from Robben Ford’s solo on ‘Help the Poor’, is the Lydian Dominant scale. This can be played over any dominant chord for a sophisticated but peculiar sound - I personally believe it is a little more palatable than the diminished sounds.
In bar 9 I came up with a short idea that uses the D Lydian Dominant scale over the D9 chord - this implies some really cool extensions to the chord playing in the background. See Fig. 3 for the lick in question.
After descending back through the lick, the solo transitions to using a G Altered scale - at least that is how I was looking at it. Another favorite scale of mine, used frequently by Ford and Alex Hutchings amongst countless others. Fig. 4 shows this lick highlighted in green, and another chromatic idea ending with a semitone bend up to a C note, the third of Am, highlighted in orange.
The rest of the solo uses conventional scales and melodic sounds, such as minor pentatonic (in various positions) and the A natural minor. There is also the inclusion of the b5 note in there, giving the licks a bluesy edge - it does imply the blues scale after all!
All of the scales will be available for download alongside the solo transcription, but please note that the way I’ve written them is not using the conventional shapes that you might find in a textbook. I’ve written them that way so that you can see how the scales are used in the solo, and not just to teach you a shape/
Making It All Work Together
Like many concepts when playing music, it would be a good idea to incorporate everything we have discussed so far into our playing, rather than simply replacing what we already have. The trick is to be tasteful when introducing new ideas, but also to be comfortable enough for it to happen organically in your playing and songwriting. Let us briefly discuss two ways that you can work on things sounding more cohesive.
Resolve!
You should always be acutely aware of how you can resolve any line that you play. It could be within the scale that you’re playing, or very close to a note that is easily within reach. Obviously the root note of the chord you are playing over is a safe bet, but any of the chord tones would work. I actually think that starting and ending phrases is more important than what notes are contained within them. To experiment with this, try to displace a simple lick by an 8th note each time you repeat it.
Avoid Being a Robot
To play ‘stepwise’ is to play the scale up and down following the basic formula. This is great for practice purposes, though impractical in the real world. It sounds robotic and predictable. Mix things up a bit! Play with different note groupings, try working through the scale with different intervals or perhaps just not starting on the root note and immediately ascending.
Final Thoughts
Using the sounds and ideas that we have discussed today is not for everyone. You should only really work on this if you have a desire to do so, forcing the knowledge when you don’t want it would be detrimental to your playing and attitude towards the guitar.
There are so many great players that use ‘outside’ notes in their playing. However, contrary to what I would usually do, I will not be providing any links to check out some examples. I believe that the best results will come of you listening to music, noticing the outside sounds yourself and going from there.
As mentioned earlier, all of the scales and a full transcription of the solo will be available for download below. Feel free to work through them and use them for your own personal development and, if you need any assistance with them or the concepts discussed today, make sure to mention it to your teacher or one of the team at The American Guitar Academy.
As promised, here is the download link for all of the material discussed in this blog post!
