Playing over chord changes is what most guitarists think of when they think of improvising — and it’s also where most players hit a wall. Knowing your scales is only the beginning; knowing which melodic strategies work over specific types of harmonic movement is what turns scale knowledge into actual music.
What this course covers: A practical collection of strategies for navigating chord changes — from simple diatonic progressions to more complex harmonic sequences — with a focus on approaches that are immediately applicable to real playing situations.
A lot of guitarists learn which scale works over which chord and stop there. The result is improvisation that’s harmonically correct but musically flat — like speaking grammatically correct sentences that say nothing interesting. Playing over changes well requires melodic strategies: knowing how to target chord tones, how to use approach notes and chromatic passing tones, how to phrase across bar lines and through the changes rather than reacting to each chord in turn.
This course presents multiple strategies you can apply deliberately, then internalise over time through practice. Each one gives you a different way of relating to the harmony — not just surviving it, but shaping your phrases to reflect and highlight the movement underneath. The goal is to build a toolkit wide enough that you can make interesting choices in any harmonic context.
