Paul Davids sent me an AWFUL guitar solo...and I fixed it - Ben Levin

oh wow I got a package cool I love this [Music] Wow Paul David sent me a guitar solo 32 he's so refined this isn't very good [Music] it's got a big tongue it's got a good time but it's kind of [Music] Paul's a really cool guy so I want to see if I can help make his guitar solo sound good he's got great tone and time here that just the notes are a little ambiguous so what I'm gonna do is pick chords that make all the notes sound really intentional and just bring some orchestration and harmony into this thing that will make it have a sense of direction I'm praying for you Paul whenever I'm trying to harmonize a melody that's complicated and doesn't really fit in one key it helps me to notate the melody so I can look at it as it abscent flows and as the pitches change and see what kind of chords would go well with these little moments of pitch luckily Paul wrote the solo out for me so I could save a step and here it is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now to harmonize that solo I will go measure by measure and see what notes are there and see what kinds of chords could go with those notes for maximum expression I will use my theory knowledge some improvisation and my guitar measure one when I look at measure one my brain explodes with play AG sharp minor chord because there's a G sharp minor triad arpeggio embedded in the melody a G sharp minor chord has G sharp B and D sharp in it and the first note is B G sharp is the next note B and then D sharp so we've got the whole triad right here yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it fits like a glove but I also see another possibility that would be really strong which is e major seven because E major seven is e G sharp B d sharp and if I were to use an E major 7 chord with this well we've got the B which is the fifth from E major seven the G sharp which is the third the B again it's the fifth again and then the D sharp which is the major seventh of the E major 7 chord and so if I were to go yah ba ba ba over an E major chord for instance ba ba ba you can see that works really well too so G sharp minor or a major are the top candidates in my mind for what could go for measure one but then we got a look at measure 2 because each measure provides context for the next and effects our decision-making measure 2 and measure 2 we have yeah ba ba ba ba and you can hear there's that jazzy little chromatic stuff going on there and what that is is it's a ethan G sharp then a passing tone and then F sharp so that chromatic passing tone of G natural I'm not going to think about it too much when I'm thinking about what chord to put with this measure instead I'm gonna look at all those other notes so we have AE G sharp F sharp that's all stuff that could be maybe from F sharp minor seven because we have F sharp which is the root a would be the minor third he would be the minor seventh of an F sharp minor 7 let's see what that sounds like this is the F sharp minor seven chord Yaba and that sounds really nice if we were to do G sharp minor for measure one and then go to F sharp minor for measure to the melody would sound like this your buh-buh-buh-buh-buh now if we were to go a major to F sharp minor it would sound like this [Music] okay nice but what if for the second measure we had a major seven instead because we have the e which is the 5th of the a major 7 the a which is the root the G sharp which is the major seventh we're skipping that G the F sharp is the 6th that might sound really good what if there was an a chord under that sounds good to me and since my goal here is to make Paul's solo sound super confident and super strong I'm gonna go with a major to a major that one chord to four chord sound it's just so strong yah you see I'm making artistic choices informed by my theory knowledge it could have been the G sharp minor F sharp minor it could have been the e to the a it could have been a number of other things in fact many other things but I'm going with my taste here measure three now measure three gets a bit spicy if we had a major and a major for the first two chords it implies that were at least vaguely in the key of E major and now in this third measure we're faced with an F natural and the b-flat right away and that F natural that would be like the flat 9 of E and the b-flat would be the flat 5 of E so it's a big shift rather than trying to force everything into E major here why don't we just treat this third measure on its own see what we come up with and then find out if that gels with the first two measures so the first thing that stands out to me about measure 3 is we have a b-flat minor try it right there in the melody b-flat d-flat F is what's in a b-flat minor triad and we have an F a b-flat and a D flat right away and this C here is like the 9 so it sounds nice if you go so b-flat minor works well with that first half of the melody how about the next part oh yeah that's really interesting to me it sounds like a very Phrygian sound and if I analyze it that way I can use my favorite Phrygian chord progression one minor flat two major flat three major and see what that's like that works really well and it's not a big surprise that this B major right here works really well right after the B flat liner especially because in the melody we have a B going to be flat you could think of that as the one of a chord of a B major chord going to its major 7 so for the second half of this measure that B in the melody could just be thought of as the root of a B major 7 chord going to the major 7th of a major 7th chord and then going back to the root again so that whole measure sounds like so that's a moment of real strength for our team Phrygian back at home thank you Phrygian for all your support and to really bring out that Phrygian vibe I used this voicing for the B major seven which is just basically B major but with the major seventh in the bass note so we've got a B major over a B flat or B major over and a sharp depending how you want to look at it so the progression so far sounds like this [Music] buh-buh-buh buhbuh so I took this same approach of analysis and then experimentation and singing the melody and playing the chords and I harmonized the entire solo this way you made me pretty let's see [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] girl 3 2 1 okay that's the quickest forty seconds I've ever seen and heard it's great how the the harmony of course gives such a solid foundation to these ostensibly random notes crazy you made me so pretty [Music]

Channel: Ben Levin

Views: 245,617

Keywords: Paul davids, ben levin, awful solo, guitar solo, lesson, guitar lesson, music theory lesson

Id: 57C-cNLk5LI

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2020