Chord Tone Soloing: A Guitarist's Guide to Melodic Improvising in Any Style

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Type: Book
Studio: Musicians Institute Press
Learn how the professionals create monster solos with this easy-to-use book/CD pack! The accompanying CD includes 68 tracks of exercises, licks, solo examples, and play-alongs. Includes all necessary foundation materials; detailed instructions on how and what to practice; essential concepts for players at every level; developing your real-time melodic reflexes; soloing over any progression in any style of music; using chords as an endless source of ideas; and more.

Excellent book, but missing a few key points
Barrett Tagliarino does an excellent job explaining how to use of chord tones in a guitar solo.

He starts out with a few simple examples, then dives right into all the theory before going back to expanding on the chord tone idea. He gets you to try to play long continuous lines trying to hit chord tones on chord changes. This concept will put guitarists leaps and bounds ahead of the vast majority of guitarists out there today.

Chord tones are extremely important and often neglected with the overemphasis on scales these days. However I find that the best way to develop melodic solos is to learn short melodic phrases while visualizing the underlying chord/arpeggio shapes for the current chord. These melodic phrases can come from transcriptions, etude books, and so on.

Knowing all the scales and where the chord tones are is simply not enough to make a good solo. Practicing long lines while hitting chord tones tends to be incredibly boring and unmelodic even with the use of chord tones. Most students don't have the vocabulary for a particular style so they struggle to come up with melodic lines. I would have liked to see more examples of melodic lines in various styles and how to visualize the underlying shapes that the melodic line weaves around.

Great Book
This book shows you how to play the right notes over any chord changes and in any style. Wanna know why your favorite player's solos sound like just the perfect notes at the right moment? Then this is the book for you. Most of the book lays out the foundation needed to understand the theory behind using chord tones and why they work. Some more advanced players may already understand most of this theory but it is still a very concise reference with tips on how/what to practice. The last part of the book provides you with different ways of targeting chord tones and ways to improve this ability. I have 2 closets full of guitar books/mags and this book could replace over half of them.

Chord Tone Soloing
This book was EXTREMELY useful to me. I've been struggling with other texts on the CAGED approach and getting not much more than frustrated. The initial exercise on charting the roots up the neck and then interconnecting them with circles turned on my first light. The trick about playing to hit a target note with a lead phrase was also an 'aha' moment. I'm still in the early stages, but I would highly recommend this to anyone who's looking to expand their skills into soloing.

Excellent!
I have many guitar books and this one is a stand out GREAT!
Excellent book, got right down to playing and getting some good sound and improvisation ideas.

This author's other book, Fretboard workbook, is also excellent.

You won't regret this purchase at all.

Great Guide!
A very good guide on soloing. It is not for the beginner, but even for the intermediate player it is a challange. It will be well worth it's price, and well worn by the time I am done with it. This is my second book by Barrett Tagliarino and I highly recommend it.