Hey, Mike here..

In the last lesson I showed you how to use Delayed Resolutions to get a bit of the unexpected into your playing.

This time I wanted to show you some musical examples of how you might apply these ideas.

So the 4 bar framework for this is as follows:

Am / / / | D7 / / / | G / / / | / / / / |

Remember the hidden thing is the moment before the resolution to G. That’s the thing we’re playing with in a bunch of different ways.

Rather than notate the exact thing I played above, I’ve just outlined the basic chords I’m kind of playing with. So sometimes I’m breaking up the chord, sometimes playing fills, etc. The notation should just guide you to what’s going on and you’ll be able to listen and pick up the vibe of it, and then you can try to use those ideas in your own playing.

How About Some Homework, eh?

Ok, your homework is to simplify your thinking :)

One of the things that scared me to death when I was first working on this stuff was that I thought that to get to this I had to learn bazillions of chords. So I bought those books like 10,001 chords for guitar, or ‘Chord Chemistry’ and spent a week or so trying to get something out of it, but ended up just giving up because it just seemed like trying to memorise a dictionary!

Now, if you see something like this transcribed with chord symbols written out for everything, it’ll look like there are billions of chords. And you *might* be thinking ‘my god, do I have to know ALL THOSE CHORDS too?’.

Well not really. You want to get away from thinking ‘chord shapes’. Think about the chords as being melodies, phrases, sonorities, densities, weight, contrast. Think about them as events that happen bang in time, or as events that unfold over time.

I see the harmony of this VERY simply.

It’s just a cadence.

But obviously I’m playing around with everything a lot. Like even though the chord indicates ‘Am’, I’m playing things like Am9, A5, Am7, Am7/D, adding in chordal runs, sometimes leaving out the chord and just playing lines, etc. You can do all that stuff! Just because you know to play ‘Am’ doesn’t mean that you have to stick to the whole chord shape.

So I really encourage you to look at the Am D7 part and check out the different colours and textures you can get from HOW you play/approach the chords.

Then check out the different Delayed Resolutions on the G part. Can you describe what the harmony is? ‘F#/G’ or ‘Eb/G’ etc. What’s going on?

Ok, any questions about any of this stuff, just ask away in the comments :)

Here’s a PDF of the whole thing too

Talk soon,

Mike