Superimposition is one of those topics that sounds daunting until you realise you’ve probably already done a version of it without knowing. At its core, it’s simply the idea of thinking about one harmonic environment while playing over another — and once you start exploring it deliberately, it opens up a huge palette of sounds from material you already know.
What you’ll get out of this lesson: A practical introduction to superimposition across four key approaches, from the simplest parallel technique right through to more advanced harmonic thinking — all rooted in ideas you can apply immediately to your soloing, comping, and composing. If you have questions about the material, get in touch via the contact page. To request specific tabs of exercises from the video, email luke@guitarvivo.com with the timestamp of the lick you want and it will be added to this page.
Everything is everything — superimposition as a mindset
Before we get into the specific techniques, it’s worth framing how superimposition actually fits into your playing. Any chord shape you know is also an arpeggio, a melody, a superimposition, and a comping tool simultaneously. Any scale shape contains multiple superimposition options. The point is that you don’t need to learn more material — you need to find more uses for what you already have. Getting more out of what you know rather than always chasing new information is one of the most efficient routes to becoming a better player. Superimposition applies equally to lead playing, rhythm guitar, and composition, so the ideas in this lesson are not limited to soloing.
What superimposition actually is
For our purposes, superimposition is where you play over one harmonic environment by thinking about a different one. It can be as gentle as thinking C major when you’re playing D Dorian, because you know they share the same notes — in that case it sounds perfectly inside, but your thinking is one step removed. Or it can be more dramatic, where the material you’re superimposing creates genuine tension against the underlying harmony. The key is that you’re deliberately placing a different harmonic frame over what’s actually happening.
Parallel superimposition — the most accessible starting point
Parallel superimposition, sometimes called chromatic superimposition or sidestepping, is where you take a musical idea and move the entire thing to a different pitch level, then bring it back. The intervals and relationships within the idea stay the same; only the position changes. In practice this means playing a lick in your key, sliding or jumping it up or down a step (half or whole), and then resolving back to the home key. The reason this works even though you’re briefly playing outside is that the listener’s ear latches onto the recognisable shape of the idea and tracks it as it moves. A strong, characterful motif — something intervallic, something with a distinctive shape — validates the movement. A generic blues lick doesn’t give the listener enough to hold onto, so it just sounds like wrong notes. The stronger the melodic idea, the more latitude you have to move it around.
Simple things are really effective. I dismissed parallel superimposition because it was theoretically simple. That was stupid of me. I thought, I’m smarter than this concept. But in reality, the concept sounds great, and I was stupid for dismissing it, because it didn’t give me a headache to work out.
Keeping your home key in view while superimposing
One practical challenge with parallel superimposition is that while you’re moving your idea around, you still need to know where your home key notes are so you can resolve cleanly. You don’t have to visualise every note of the new key you’ve moved into — but you do need to keep the target notes of your original key present in your mind so you can land on them confidently when you’re ready to come back. Practise moving a phrase up a half step and back, then down a half step and back, always with a clear resolution point in mind. Over time, you’ll be able to move further afield before resolving.
Taking it further: Parallel superimposition is the first of four approaches covered in the full livestream. Once it’s comfortable, you can explore the other three methods — which range from modal thinking and chord substitution through to tritone-based superimpositions — and discover how often different approaches arrive at the same musical result from different directions. Any of these techniques can be applied not just to soloing but to reharmonising chord progressions and rearranging existing material.
Your homework: Over a backing track in a minor key, come up with one simple, distinctive lick — ideally something with a bit of an intervallic jump in it. Practise moving that exact lick up a half step and resolving back to the home key. Once that’s comfortable, try moving it down a half step instead. Spend 10 minutes on this, focusing on making the resolution feel intentional rather than accidental.