In episode 86 of the guitar music theory podcast I am your host

Desi Cerna so today I'm going to talk about what it means to play over chords so if you're

interested in soloing over chord changes

or outlining chord progressions or using chord tone soloing,

I'll explain what you need to do.

But before we get started, I want to direct all of my

podcast listeners over to my website guitar music theory.com. Answer the

questions I ask you about your playing and I'll send you free custom video

instruction calibrated to your current level. I'll show you exactly what you need to

be working on right now in order to get your guitar skills together and move forward with your playing.

Enroll in your free video course now at guitar music theory.com, you can click on the link

in the podcast show notes. All right, let's dive in. So playing over chords refers to playing lead lines in a manner that

accentuates the chord changes so it involves targeting the notes of chords that you play over so that your lead lines are closely

connected to the chords. So with these types of lead lines, you'll actually hear the chord changes even when the chords are not present.

Now typically when this subject is discussed it's set in the context of jazz improvisation

but the same technique is used in rock music as well.

And so I want to give you examples of how you would play over chords in more familiar music, that being rock music.

So my first example is Gary Moore's song

Still Got the Blues for You.

Let me play a portion of the lead line that's kind of the signature most

recognizable melody from the song and I want you to notice that you can actually make out the basic chord changes just by listening to the lead line

I don't even need to have the chords underneath me so let me play a portion of. It sounds like this. All right, so notice how each phrase here lands on a note that is part of the underlying

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