My approach for , whether for recordings or live performances, encompasses various strategies. I try not to think too much about what the approach will be at any given moment. Instead, I prefer to listen and react as naturally and instinctively as possible.
That said, I’m aware of the “tools in the box” and it can be fun to focus on a specific approach in a conscious way. Let’s consider a voice-leading approach for soloing over a blues-rooted chord progression. The voice-leading approach targets chord tones that move up or down.
I prefer to mingle this approach naturally with the blues approach, but there is a raised awareness of the direction of the lines and how those targeted chord tones are set up. offers a 16-bar solo improvised over the chord progression Em - A7 - Em - A7 - Cmaj7 - B7b9 - Cmaj7 - B7b9, with each chord played for two bars, followed by a return to the tonic, Em. These chords and their voicings are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 1 begins over the initial two bars of Em, and I start off by sounding the major 2nd, F#, followed by the minor 3rd, G and then the E tonic. In this way, the F# and G notes set up the root note. Figure 3 offers a closer look at this melodic movement.
Figure 4 illustrates E minor hexatonic (E, F#, G, A, B, D), which can be thought of a E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D) with the addition of the major 2nd, F#. In bar 3 of Figure 1, over A7, I hammer-on from A to B, the major 2nd of A, then pull-off back to A, followed in bar 4 with.