Here you’ll find a breakdown of my R&B video and a couple of the main concepts behind it.

Lick In slo-mo

In this video, we’ll talk about the two main concepts to this lick. The first and foremost one is understanding what key we’re in.

Here’s a brief overview of how we’re getting these chords. You add harmonies by looking at the regular major scale (just “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do”), now we pick a note (let’s say Do), then skip a note (re) and then picking another note (mi).

Going from Do (skip re), Mi (skip fa) So. The first chord is Do, mi, and so.

When you add these harmonies, you end up with chords. There’s 7 different notes in a major scale, so you end up with 7 different chords. I won’t really spend time talking about this on this example, but if you’d like to know more - this is called “harmonizing the major scale”. It’s a fancy name for taking a major scale, then adding harmony.

What you find when you add harmony is that there ends up being 3 chords that are major (the 1st, 4th and 5th) and 3 chords that are minor (2nd, 3rd, 6th). Knowing these chords is essential music theory knowledge that will helps us make sense of progressions in songs.

I usually refer to chords using the numbers. in C major, Dm is the 2nd chord, the ii chord.

So, why are we going to be thinking in C major??

Back to the lick: a Dm chord is being used as the 2 chord in this song. When you see a regular minor chord, how do we know whether it’s a 2, 3, or 6 chord? Sometimes people assume it’s a 6 chord but this isn’t the case in this song. We’re using all the chords of C major, but using the D as the home base. Some people call this dorian. It technically is, but that makes it sound too confusing. It’s simple. To me:

D is the “home base”, but we use all the of chords of C.

That’s it.

Sliding with first inversion chords

Now since we’re all settled into thinking of the key of C, now the second concept is to just play more chords in the key of C! We start with the Am at the top of the lick and move down one at at time down to C.

There’s only 2 shapes: the minor chord shape and the major chord shape.

The voicings I used were all first inversion voicings, meaning that the root is flipped up an octave higher (see above). These kinds of chords are perfect for that slide-y gospel sound.

What’s even better than more lick breakdowns?

Having someone who’s been in your shoes to mentor you step-by-step through your growth.

If you need more clarification, I’d love to help.

Learning R&B, soul and gospel guitar, it can seem mysterious and can be frustration without the proper help. I spent years looking through Youtube videos and tutorials to try to figure out exactly these guitar players were doing. I picked up a few cool licks online, but nothing that truly led to my understanding of where these R&B guys were pulling their chords from.

Here’s the problem: R&B, soul and gospel music weren’t born out of the guitar. They were designed for vocalists and keyboard players; they weren’t designed with guitar in mind.

This is exactly why it’s so hard to find information on the “weird” chords: chords that “shouldn’t” work but do, chords that are out of the key. I’ve studied with a few of the best gospel keyboard players in Nashville, Victor Wooten (and his brother Regi) and adapted their approaches into my own playing.

Here’s the good news: there are three main concepts that will greatly improve your ability to identify and re-create R&B/neo-soul chords with ease.

I have availability for 10 students only!

If you’re serious about guitar, having a good teacher could save you years of uncertainty on the guitar. I’ve been there.

I know first hand that having a good guitar teacher is the quickest way to guarantee the quickest progress to push through your plateaus.