The importance of practicing this, and getting really good at it, is extreme, for the same reason that when you are speaking, you don't just suddenly stop
Looks like a typo doesn't it? Although you can still get what I'm trying to say, the thought is clearly unfinished. If I was to train a few more sentences like that together, you'd eventually become confused as to what I'm trying to say.
Leads are no different. You're chaining together musical thoughts. Many of the same rules as speaking, or writing, apply; tell 'em what you're going to say, say it, tell 'em what you said. Stay on topic. Make every word count. And so on.
"Staying on topic", and "make every word count" are probably the ones I'd relate chord tone targeting to the most. If you consider the harmony (chord) to be the topic, and the topic is C major, then you can present your points as you like, as long as you come back to C major chord tones. Expanding on this basic soloing principal, to me, shows the wit, thoughtfulness, and experience, of the player. But just like somebody speaking, if they do nothing but tell jokes, offer personal insights, or talk about the old days, you'll probably stop listening.
Anyways, I've been working pretty hard on this, and along the way, came up with a practical way to make sure you do this without having to constantly be thinking about the notes in the chord.
It's all about knowing your five octave positions, and where they fit into the mode you're playing in. If you haven't yet, take a look at my CAGED, PMAID, 45123 article. What it discusses is how the five Caged octave patterns relate positionally to the five most commonly used modes, and the five pentatonic positions. I give enough in this article though to get you through it; as long as you more or less know the notes all over the fretboard, and know some basic positions (like a major scale, a minor scale, and your pentatonics), you can use this tip.
Here's a diagram showing the five octave positions. If you don't know this, you really, really should. It's an easy way of finding every place on the fretboard you can play a given note.
Here's the basics for an A blues jam (so an A7 vamp, making A mixolydian, and A pentatonic major, good candidates for improvising). Remember, when you just see a 7 with no other indication, it's a dominant chord (a lot of people call it a "blues" chord).
So...A7. You know right off the bat it's got an A in it. If you know a little about chords, you know a dominant 7 chord, is the same as a major 7 chord, but with a flatted 7th. So, A7 is A, C#, E, G (an Amaj7 would be A, C#, E, G#). You can also just play the chord and see where your fingers are, but it's good to know how basic chords are built.
If 7th chords aren't in your bag of tricks yet, just stick to A major (A, C#, E), and work with the third (C#)...keep reading.
Anyway, I've often read that the most important chord tones are the third (which determines if a chord is major or minor), and the 7th (which determines a lot of things, like if the chord is dominant, diminished, adds a major or minor 7th to create chords like Amin(maj7), etc.). This seems to pan out, because if you take any seventh chord of any kind, and cut out all the notes but the third and seventh, you can still hear the character of the chord (that's a great comping technique btw). If there's no 7th, play the root and third, or third and 5th. Extensions make it more interesting, but let's stick to the basics for now.
Based on that, let's target the third. So, A, C#, E, G....we want to target the C# in our lead phrases. Every time we play this note, it will sound very much "in", because it's "on topic".
Let's use A pentatonic major to get started (the number at the top is the starting fret of the diagram, R = root, so in this case A, and the numbers indicate the number of the note in the scale, NOT the finger or fret number). Remember that in pentatonic major, which is a five note scale, there is no 4 and no 7.
4
- R - 2 - 3 -
- 5 - 6 - - -
2 - 3 - - - -
6 - - R - - -
3 - - 5 - - -
- R - 2 - - -
Now, find an easy C# in that scale. Everybody knows that C is the third fret on the A string, so C# would be the fourth fret. If you look at this diagram, you see it pans out; the fourth fret is where the third note of this scale pattern is located. You probably play it with your index finger when playing this pattern. Note that, no matter where you play this scale pattern, the third (and all the other tones) will ALWAYS be in that same position relative to the root of the scale.
So, now look at the octave chart. Based on that, you should be able to see that if you play a note on the A string, you can find the octave of that note on the G string, two frets over. So, up two strings, over two frets, there's your first octave. You can also see that if you play a note on the G string, you can find the next octave up two strings and over three frets. Look at the diagram again, you see it works.
If you memorize the five octave positions, you can just find the note you want, anywhere, and your fingers will show you the octaves on their own, making it easy to find everywhere you can play any note on the fretboard.
So, play A string, 4th fret; G string, 6th fret; E string, 9th fret. You've played three octaves of C#.
Now, starting anywhere in the scale (the root is a good candidate, so start on A), play up the scale (or down it) until you get to one of those three C#. Try to make the C# land on a beat. Voila, you have just exercised chord tone targeting.
What if you wanted to target the flatted 7th (remember, A7 = A, C#, E, G). Well...there is no 7th in a pentatonic major scale, so in this case, no G. That doesn't mean you can't add it though; in fact, many, many guitar players have built their sound around using pentatonic scales with the correct 7th degree added, creating a 6 note scale.
Here's the pattern again with the flatted 7th added (this is building up to the mixolydian mode btw...). Note that we now start on the third fret so we can get that nice low G in there:
3
- R - 2 - 3 -
- - 5 - 6 7 - -
- 2 - 3 - - - -
- 6 7 - R - - -
- 3 - - 5 - - -
7 - R - 2 - - -
Look at the octave diagram again; you see if you play a note on the low E, you can find the octave two strings up, two frets over. From there, you can find the next octave 2 strings up, three frets over. So, E string 3rd fret, D string 5th fret, B string 8th fret. These are all Gs.
Do it again; start anywhere in the scale, land on any of the newly added G notes. Bam, you are now targeting the b7, which sounds great in leads over dominant chords.
Get creative from there; do a run to G, then from that G, go up to a C#, then from that C#, do a run to an A. You've chained three thoughts, targeting the b7, 3, and root. Once you can do that consistently (and one day, without really thinking about it at all, just because you've done this so much you just know where they all are), you're really well on your way to "staying on topic".
That's the basic mechanics, and you'd be surprised how just sticking to that can drastically improve the quality of your solos; you'd also be surprised how many people don't practice this; imho, it's one of the most important things that separates a player from the wanker. Of course you can experiment with landing in different places, or use really long thoughts that don't resolve exactly when expected, but remember, if you just ramble on and never get back to the topic in any way, people will stop listening (unless you can fool them into thinking your some kind of savant).
Have fun with that. As always, thanks for visiting.
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