Post Your Questions HERE for Tomorrow's Live Lesson

Jake, My guitar teacher taught me that you can play an ionian scale over a lydian chord progression and an ionian scale over a dorian chord progression. In the case of the lydian chord progression you get the interplay if the 4 and #4. In the dorian chord progress, you get the interplay of the #3 and 3. My teacher said that it has a very "outside" sound. The Lydian example does not sound as smooth to me, because the 4 sounds harsh against the chords. Have you heard of this before? I think it's not unlike playing minor pentatonic over mixolydian chords. Chris

Try playing these kinds of chords descending or ascending into a more stable chord. For example, if my chord progression is C-D-G-Em-C-D-G, I could play C-D-G-G/F#-Em-C-D-G instead to move that G to Em. The best slash chords to use other than notes in the chord are notes in the scale. In the example I gave earlier, F# is in the scale of G major, the key my example is in. You usually want to stick to playing these chords for a short amount of time because it adds dissonance. The idea is that these non-chord-tone slash chords will help you move to the next chord more smoothly. This is something pretty specific, so you'll have to experiment with it on your own to see what works and what doesn't. Try finding some songs you like that have these kinds of chords and figure out why they work. I hope this helped.

Spencer

Hi Jake, I would like to learn more about slash chords. In the case of, say, G/B, the base note (B) is a note that’s in the chord (G), making it an inversion of the G major chord (hope I’ve understood this correctly). But here’s my question: if I were to use a base note that does not belong to the chord itself, are there any rules/guidelines for what notes will be suitable as base note? Any intervals that tend to work better than others? Many thanks!

Anna Jansson