A 6 Step Guide to Playing Over Changes

Have you ever experienced the challenge of playing over changes? Have you ever experienced the challenge of staying in form within the songs that you’re improvising or trying to come up with a cool guitar part to? Well, stick around because today I’m going to show you the most basic thing you can do with any song you ever learn.

Let’s say we’re playing a [B-flat Blues]—Jazz Blues, right? That’s a very, very common form in Jazz. The first thing you gotta do if you’ve never even played over changes is just start by playing [The Roots] within time. It sounds like this:

One, two, three, four; two, two, three, four; one, three, two, three, four; four, two, three, four; five, two, three, four; six, two, three, four; seven, two, three, four; eight, two, three, four; nine, two, three, four; ten, two, three, four; eleven, two, three, four; twelve.

Now, you might be noticing that I always said the name of the bar in my first counting, as in [One, two, three, four; two, two, three, four; three]—that’s because I always want to keep awareness when I’m practicing of the [Harmonic Pulse], [Harmonic Rhythm]—meaning when did the chords change and at what time. And if this doesn’t come naturally to you yet, it’s very good to have this kind of verbal practice where you’re saying out loud the names of the bars while you’re practicing.

Now, the second level will just be adding [The Thirds] into that. The thirds are just going to symbolize your awareness of whether it’s a major chord or a minor chord. So, the first chord of the Blues is going to be a major chord, and that’s exactly what I’m going to play. This is a major third, which can be represented just on one string in this way:

And the same goes for the second chord, [E-flat], but when I get to the next chord, it’s going to be an [E-diminished]. But for now, all I care about is that we have a minor third in there, then going back to B-flat, and then F minor into B-flat into E-flat. Then we have E-diminished, going back to B-flat. Then we have G, C minor, F, and then we have what’s called the turnaround, which is a [B-flat into G, C-minor into F].

Let’s play it very slowly: [One, two, three, four; two, three, four; two, two, three, four; three, two, three, four; four, two, three, four; five, two, three, four; six, two, three, four; seven, two, three, four; eight, two, three, four; nine, two, three, four; ten, two, three, four; eleven, two, three, four; twelve.]

[Music]

Good! Whoa! Our next level is going to be to play the whole triad. That means that we have a [One, Three, and Five]. So essentially, we’re kind of stacking thirds as we go along. So, let’s add the fifth right now. The first thing is a major chord, then we have another major chord, a diminished chord, meaning we only have minor thirds in there, and then we’re back. And then we have a [Two-Five-One into the fourth degree]—that would be F minor. That’s the triad right there, B-flat. Then we have E-flat, E-diminished, back to B-flat, into G, C minor, F, and then we have the turnaround, B-flat into G, C minor into F.

Let’s play that in time: [One, two, three, four.]

[Music]

Very cool! Well, now we’re going to add the seven in there, so that’s going to sound like this:

[Music]

Okay, very cool! Well, the next thing I want to challenge you to do is to be able to play all of this up an octave—roots, thirds, triads, adding the seven in there:

[Music]

So now, for the second part, what we’re gonna do is [Voice Lead] the actual triads within a set. That’s the first chord we’re gonna have. This is a root position; you can see that the root is right over here, [B-flat, Root Position]. [E-flat, Second Inversion]—you can see the root is in the middle. [E-diminished, Second Inversion]—you can see the root is in the middle. Then we’re back to B-flat. Then we have F minor; you can see the root is right there. This means that this is a first inversion into B-flat. The root is right here, root position, [E-flat, Second Inversion]—here’s the root. [E-diminished, Second Inversion]—here’s the root. Back to B-flat, root position. This is G, first inversion—here’s G, the root. C minor—here is the root. F major, once again, here is the root. And the turnaround—root position into first inversion, G, C minor. And then we can go over here to this F, and it will lead us to the first inversion of B-flat.

Let’s do this in time:

[Music]

So, these are the very fundamentals of being able to even start to approach improvisation on the instrument from the perspective of playing over an actual tune. You gotta know how to play the root notes all around the fretboard. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Jazz or a, you know, a Beatles song; you gotta know how to play the roots of that song. Then, of course, you gotta be able to start adding the qualities like the [Major Third or the Minor Third]—depends on the chord. Then, moving on to the full triad, all the way to the seventh—that’s very, very basic stuff that you gotta be able to do in a few octaves, as I demonstrated. Then voice leading the actual triads on a given set all across the fretboard. And if we start developing that, that’s where we can really start developing each one of these into actual phrases that sound like [Flow, Music, Motif Development, etc.]. And you can go very, very deep into these kinds of topics in my [Galactic Modern Guitar Series], where you will discover how to solidify your fretboard knowledge in a very methodical level, step by step, within 15 modules, over 100 videos in there with PDFs and everything.

So, if you liked this lesson, please make sure to subscribe and hit that like button, and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

[Music]