How’s it going, guys? This is John McClennan
and I’m here with guitarcontrol.com, bringing
you this video blog. Today we’re looking at
“Giant Steps”, John Coletrane’s tune. And I’m
showing you some lines that will get you through
probably the hardest changes of the tune.
So this song is pretty heavy and you’ve got
to play some of these lines. You’ve got to
work on the chords and doing all this is just
going to help your ear. It’s going to help
your chops and really practicing these lines
will show you how to outline chords and
familiarize you with a lot of bebop idioms.
Let’s jump right into this lick that I wrote.
What we’ve got here is coming off a B major 7.
We’re starting in the upper part of the chord.
So what this is, is 9, 11, 11 and then 8, slide
to 7. Already that sound has a jazzy sound to it,
because like I said, you’re in the upper part of
the chord. That’s just G major 7. And then this
is thinking about going to stay an E flat major
7 chord, you know? This kind of thing here.
I like to do some slides. So once you resolve
here to the 3rd of an E flat major 7, you know?
That’s just a lick coming off E flat major 7.
After E flat major 7, you’re going to an A minor,
D9, G major 7, II-V-I. Basically that can be
done up here. Going to G major 7 like that.
But this is a Charlie Parker lick that I got.
So you take a little bit of like that modern
sounding stuff like this… And then all of a
sudden I interject that with bebop, you know,
and you’ve got a nice line there. So here it
is slowly, the whole lick. Up to speed. G6-9
right there. The note resolving to the 3rd
and you have that harmonic context.
Click the link below for the tab; practice
that one and we’ll see you in the next lesson.
Thanks for watching.
