How to Play the Chord Progression from Giant Steps

How’s it going, guys? My name is John McClennan and I’m here with guitarcontrol.com, excited to bring you another video blog. We’re looking at the chord progression to “Giant Steps”, John Coletrane’s tune. And what I want to show you is some real nice, what I call, shell chords. They’re really great for comping in a rhythm section, especially when you have a piano player. Because if you have a piano player and he’s sort of playing the dominant role in the rhythm section as far as like holding down the chords, as a guitar player you’ve got to be out of his way. So these chords, the kinds of shapes that I was just playing there, those tend to stay out of the way. What I’m doing here it take, say, a B major 7. The first chord is 2-4-3-4. And I’m just stripping down the notes. I’m taking out the 5th. So I just end up playing this chord with the root, the 7th and the 3rd of the chord. So you can finger it like this. I like to go like this because sometimes I’ll get that and go like this. Here’s the first chord, D major 7, then up to a D7: 5-5-5-7; G major 7, again, no root, 3-4-7; B flat 7: 8-7-9; E flat major 7, same as this first chord, just up here now, so 6-7-8. Then you do a quick II-V going to G. So this will be A minor 7: 7-5-8, to D7: 5-5-7 and then resolving here on G major 7: 5-4-7. So you have… So the whole thing is like this. Here it is slow. Resolve there on 5-4-7 for your G major 7. So one more time up to speed. Maybe on that E flat major 7 you can do that. Just fun ways of getting through those changes. Click the link below and we’ll see you in the next lesson. Thanks.