Triads are everywhere — but most guitarists use them purely as chord shapes and never realise they are also the key to melodic, intelligent soloing. Levi Clay’s ACE system gives you a single framework that joins up your rhythm playing and your single-note improvisation, so you stop switching between two separate modes of thinking and start playing music instead.
What you’ll get out of this lesson: You’ll see how Levi’s ACE system unlocks triads as a vehicle for both chordal playing and single-note lines, giving you a practical way to navigate chord changes that works in jazz, blues, fusion, and beyond.
Who is Levi Clay?
Levi Clay is a guitar player based in Scotland, originally from London, who came up through the same London scene as GuitarVivo’s Luke. He is a self-described Telecaster player (though today he is playing a Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion — a semi-hollow instrument designed to sit between a jazz guitar and a solid body) running into a Kemper with a 65 Lohmann profile by Michael Britt. Levi’s influences range from Scott Henderson’s blues-fusion (he credits Henderson’s “Dog Party” album for pointing him towards the blues) to the Tribal Tech era, and through studying with players across the jazz and fusion spectrum. That mixture — technical rigour plus deep blues feel — is exactly what the ACE system reflects.
The ACE system: what it is
Levi’s ACE system is his framework for using triads as the primary building block for both comping and soloing. Rather than treating chords and scales as separate disciplines — strum the chords, then take a solo — the ACE system asks you to see the triad shapes embedded within every chord voicing and every melodic line simultaneously. The three letters stand for his three-part approach to working through triads across the neck, giving you a systematic way to cover the fretboard with triad shapes in all inversions and on all string sets, rather than relying on a handful of familiar grips.
From chords to single notes: one continuous language
The key insight Levi shares is that the gap between rhythm playing and lead playing is largely a mental one. If you know where your triad shapes are, you already know where your melody notes are — they are the same notes. This is what makes the ACE system powerful for improvisation: instead of thinking “I need a scale now,” you are thinking “I know where the chord tones are, and my line is going to target and connect them.” This produces melodic, harmonically clear lines even over fast-moving changes.
“Anybody that follows my stuff will know that I’m a Telecaster guy, and today I’m not playing a Telecaster.”
Endless possibilities: inversions and string sets
Levi’s approach to making the system yield “endless possibilities” — as the lesson title promises — is to work triads through all their inversions (root position, first inversion, second inversion) and across every available string set on the guitar. Most players learn one or two triad shapes per chord type and stop there. Levi takes each triad type through the full fretboard, so that at any given moment he can access the chord voicing or the melody note he wants without shifting position or losing the thread of the harmony. That fretboard fluency is what turns a system into a musical language.
Applying it to real music
Levi references Scott Henderson’s approach as a model for where deep, blues-rooted feel meets sophisticated harmony — pointing out that Henderson’s technique, contrary to what shred-focused players might assume, is not primarily about speed or accuracy but about expression and note choice. The same philosophy underpins the ACE system: knowing your triads deeply enough that you can play with feel and intention rather than running through memorised patterns. The goal is music that sounds considered and personal, whether you are comping behind a singer or soloing over changes.
Taking it further: Once you are comfortable with the basic ACE system in one key, try applying it to a simple set of changes — a I-IV-V blues or a minor ii-V-i — and see how the triad shapes from one chord connect smoothly to the next. Levi also mentions the value of studying players like Don Mock (whose Guitar Secrets and Symmetrical Scales books are a rich resource) and Brent Mason for examples of how triads can be used across very different styles.
Your homework: Take one major and one minor triad in the key of G and map every inversion across all four string sets (strings 1-2-3, 2-3-4, 3-4-5, 4-5-6). Play each shape slowly, naming the notes aloud. Then improvise a 16-bar line over a simple backing track using only those triad tones — no scales allowed. Do this every day this week and notice how quickly your lines become more melodic and harmonically targeted.