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Watermelon Man Chord Solo Study
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Learning how to play jazz guitar means leaning how to bring different textures into your
soloing ideas.
While many of us want to learn how to bring chord-soloing phrases into our playing, we
often shy away from working on this skill in the practice room since we believe that
chord soloing means using big, hard to play play chords to create cool-sounding chord
solos.
But, often times less is more when it comes to building effective chord solos, and
bringing chord soloing lines and phrases into your solos and chord-melody phrases.
In today’s lesson, we’ll be looking at how you can use double-stops, two-note ideas, to
build cool-sounding and effective chord solos, without having to bring larger chords into
the equation.
If you have avoided learning chord-soloing techniques because you thought it would be
too difficult. Or you have worked out larger chord forms and are looking to bring a new
texture to your chord-soloing ideas, then checking out this double-stop chord solo over
Watermelon Man may be just the thing to take your playing to the next level.
In order to fully learn this solo, try breaking it down into four-bar phrases and learning
each one before putting the solo together as a whole. This will help you ease into the
larger solo, while getting a chance to dissect and absorb the material behind each
phrase at the same time.
So grab your axe and have fun!
Solo Analysis - First Four Bars
The solo starts off by using double-stops mixed in with a few notes from the underlying
F Mixolydian Mode. Throughout this study, the double-stop lines will be coming from the
Mixolydian Mode, the 5th mode of the major scale.
So, if you are unfamiliar with this mode, you might want to check out my Mixolydian
Mode Page in order to get this scale in your ears and under your fingers before moving
on to the rest of the study.
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Throughout the etude, you will notice that there are moments, such as the 4th beat of
the second bar in this phrase, where I use a hammer-on in the recording between Ab
and A.
Since adding slurs such as this might not be for everyone, I left them out of the notation.
But, feel free to add in hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides where you see fit.
You can either listen to the audio below to get an idea of how I use slurs to spice up
these lines, or come up with approaches of your own.
As long as your taste and musical ears says it’s cool to add in slurs, then go for it.
Solo Analysis - Second Four Bars
The second four bars is an almost exact repeat of the first four bars, though this time
the notes have been moved up to fit the Bb7 chord that occurs in the first two-bars of
this phrase.
The last two bars are a slight adaptation of what you learned in the first phrase of the
solo, mostly to get back from the Bb7 while keeping the spirit of the line intact in a “call
and response” sort of fashion.
Taking a line and moving it around the harmony in order to make it fit over different
chords and sections of a tune is a great way to develop your sense of phrasing, while
not having to worry about coming up with new material for every bar in your solo.
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Solo Analysis - Third Four Bars
The third, four-bar section uses repetition to build on a motive, altering it slightly over
the C7 chords, in order to keep a sense of familiarity within the phrase without sounding
stale at the same time.
Again, the notes for each lick are taken from the underlying Mixolydian Mode, C Mixo
and Bb Mixo respectively. As well, each phrase, except the first bar, starts and ends on
the related triad.
We sometimes feel that we should avoid triads in our soloing as they sound too plain
and not interesting enough to be jazzworthy.
But, sometimes the sound of a triad can be effective and bring a sense of harmony to
your lines that can’t be duplicated with a scale or larger chord form.
So, though you may advance as a player throughout your study, don’t forget to keep
triads in your bag of tricks. They might come in handy more than you would think.
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Solo Analysis - Fourth Four Bars
The last four bars play off of a variation of the riff heard in the previous phrase, though
now it is moving chromatically down from C to B in the first bar. Then down to Bb, Ab,
Gb and finally resolving to the F triad in bar three.
By focusing on triads while stepping outside the given harmony, we are giving the
listener an anchor to grab onto, the familiar sound of the triad, while bringing them along
to “outside” harmonies at the same time.
Whenever you have a series of chords like this, C7-Bb7-F7, you might be tempted to
spice up your lines by adding in different scales and modes.
But, sometimes the most effective way to add outside colors to your lines is to stick to a
simple idea, such as triads, and then create a new harmonic path, such as the one here
that moves from C-B-Bb-Ab-Gb-F, that gets you to your destination by different means
than is written in the tune.
Watermelon Man Chord Solo Etude
To finish things off, here is the full chord solo written out with audio to act as a guide
when working on this study in the practice room. When you see the whole solo on one
page, you can really see how the use of space helps to divide the phrases, letting the
solo breathe at the same time.
So, spend some time and work out this solo in your practice routine this week. Then, try
writing out or improvising your own double-stop based solo over Watermelon Man.
It’s a great tune to know, and one that comes up often in jam sessions and on pick-up
gigs, so definitely worth learning.
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Click to hear audio for the Watermelon Man Chord Solo Etude.
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So you can see, you don’t have to use large, 3, 4 or 5-note chords to build a cool
sounding and effective chord solo.
After you work this solo out in the practice room, try coming up with your own doublestop based solos over Watermelon Man, or any tune you are working on in the
woodshed.
And, if you do learn the solo, feel free to record a video or audio version of you playing
the solo and post in on the Matt Warnock Guitar Facebook Page for others to check out.
Check out this solo in the woodshed this week and have fun!
www.mattwarnockguitar.com