Truefire Jeff McErlain's Soloing the Changes (2018)

Most guitar players learn how to solo and improvise with the pentatonic scale. All 5 of those notes are relatively safe to play and that’s a great place to start. But after a while, those solos start sounding a little bland and disconnected from the chord changes they’re playing over.

Learning how to ‘play the changes’ is a rite of passage that guitar players must pass through to take their playing to the next level. Targeting chord tones as you solo over changes is the central focus of Jeff McErlain’s Soloing the Changes.

”We’ll work on “soloing the changes” using 10 backing tracks featuring the chord progressions and feels used in many popular rock songs. For example we’ll tackle a patented Pink Floyd style progression, a vamp similar to the outro of Frampton’s Do You Feel Like We Do, a solo that highlights the flat six dominant seven chord, and how to play over an unusual five major seven chord on a progression similar to Jeff Beck’s ‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.

We’ll also check out a great way to solo over the ubiquitous one six four five chord progression, changes in the style of Bell Bottom Blues, a progression in the style of John Mayer’s Waiting on the World Change, a progression in the style of the Beatles’ While My Guitar Gently Weeps, a four major to four minor line that highlights the unique changes of a progression along the lines of It Hurts Me To, and finally we’ll get a bit quirky on a chord progression in the style of St. James Infirmary.”