Chord Tone Soloing Article

The examples in this article on Chord Tone Soloing are directly from the book The Complete Guide To Improvisation.  I think it's an important topic since being able to create a strong solo with only chord tones is fundamental to being a good improvisor. I spend a good deal of time on this topic in my improvisation class at Berklee. When learning a new tune, improvising with strictly chord tones is a good way to begin and really learn the changes.

Additional areas addressed in the chord tone soloing chapter of the book include: phrasing, guide tone lines, creating a solo with guide tone lines, creating a chord tone solo with specific intervals, and chord tone solos on Coltrane's Moment's Notice and Irving Berlin's How Deep Is The Ocean. Here are a few things to look out for in the solo (based on Coltrane's Moment's Notice) in this article: use of guide tone lines, motives, how the chords are connected, use of syncopation.

It's not easy to create a nice sounding solo with strictly chord tones since all of the notes are stable and "inside" notes. Because of that, we need resort to the use of motives, variety of phrase lengths, starting and ending phrases in varying places, pacing, rhythmic variation, melodic angularity, etc, in order to build a strong solo. The goal is to try and make the chord tone solo sound melodic, flowing and musical as opposed to an exercise. It's not necessary to sound all of the chord tones for each chord. Also, it's helpful to avoid sounding arpeggios and running the chords up and down. 

A few other things to think about: try to sound a single melodic idea across the bar line as opposed to playing an idea in one measure and another idea on the next measure. Another thing to keep in mind is to avoid consistently hitting beat one.

You can download the article here:

Chord Tone Soloing (Article)