GRANT GREEN II V I LICK – ANALYSIS, CONCEPTS, AND BLUES SOLO

written by Matt Warnock

G rant Green was one of the finest soloists to ever play jazz guitar. His playing was bluesy, full of bebop
vocabulary, and swung hard no matter what situation he was in. While his playing style may seem out of
reach for many of us, that doesn’t have to be the case.
In this lesson, you learn a classic Grant Green lick, break it down to its fundamental concepts, and then
apply all of that material to a jazz blues solo.
Grab your guitar, dust off your favorite amp, and dig into Grant Green’s solos conceptsover a ii V I
progression.

What’s In This Grant Green Lick?

Before you dig into the lick itself, here are the concepts used in this line that you can learn, practice, and
expand upon in your soloing.

Am7b5 Over Cm7

The first concept in this lick has Grant using an Am7b5 arpeggio over a Cm7 chord. When doing so, he
creates a Cm6 sound in his line.
 Am7b5 A C Eb G

Played over Cm 6 1 b3 5

As a rule, you can use a m7b5 arpeggio from the 6 of a m7 chord to create a m6 sound
in your lines.
Here’s how that looks and sounds:

Ebmaj7 Over Cm7

You can also play an Ebmaj7 arpeggio over a Cm7 chord, creating the intervals b3-5-b7-9:

Ebmaj7 Eb G Bb D
 Played over Cm b3 5 b7 9

As a rule, you can play a maj7 arpeggio from the b3 of any m7 chord to produce a
rootless m9 sound.
Here’s how that concept looks and sounds so you can start to take it onto the guitar.

The Altered Scale

The altered scale is found in the solos of every great jazz guitarist, including Grant Green, and it’s seen in
this lick with the #9-b9 notes. When used over 7th chords, the altered scale highlights the b9,#9,b5, and #5
intervals in your lines. Because of this, the scale creates a lot of tension that you have to address in your
solos.
 F Altered Scale F Gb G# A Cb Db Eb

1 b9 #9 3 b5 b13 b7

Here are two fingerings for the altered scale to get you started with this important sound on the guitar.
 Cm Triad over F7

You also see a Cm triad over F7 in the line, which outlines the 5-b7-9 intervals of the F7 chord:

Cm Triad C Eb G

Played over F7 5 b7 9

As a rule, you can play a minor triad from the 5th of any 7th chord.
So, if you have a G7 chord, you can play a Dm triad, etc.
Here’s how that looks and sounds to get it under your fingers:
 Approach Notes

Approach notes are chromatic notes that lead by half step into diatonic notes.
Most often they are used below diatonic notes, but you can also use them above.

In this lick, you see this as the B-C notes in the final bar. Here’s how an approach note below looks like on
paper:

Lower Neighbor Notes

The last concept is the lower neighbor tone, which you can see as LN in the tab.
Lower neighbor notes are when you have a diatonic note (C for example), then you play
a note just below that note (B) then back to the diatonic note (C).
So, C-B-C, with the B being the lower neighbor tone.
Here’s how that looks on paper:
Grant Green Lick

Now that you know what concepts are used to build the lick, it’s time to learn this lick on guitar. Once you
can play the lick as is, take it to other keys as you expand it in your practice routine.
Grant Green Blues Solo With Lick

To take this lick further, here’s a jazz blues solo that uses typical Grant Green lines, as well as the exact lick
in the final four bars.
Learn the solo as is, then begin to integrate these ideas into your soloing vocabulary from there.
There’s an audio track to play along with in the practice room, and a backing track to work with as you
expand this solo in your studies.
GRANT GREEN SOLOING – DOMINANT CHORD CONCEPTS
written by Matt Warnock

G rant Green was a legendary jazz guitarist who placed his stamp on the bebop, post bop, and jazz
funk genres during his career. Because of this mastery, Grant is an easy choice when looking for
inspiration in the practice room, and to take your own playing to the next level.
In this lesson, you’ll focus on one side of Grant’s playing, his dominant 7th concepts. While a full study of
Grant’s dominant 7th soloing concepts would be daunting, you’ll zoom in on three main ideas in this article.
By working on V7alt lines in major and minor keys, as well as the dominant bebop scale, you’ll get a glimpse
into the playing style of one of jazz’s greatest guitarists.
Check these lines out, work the concepts behind these lines further in your playing, and when ready, learn
the sample solo at the end of the article.

Grant Green Soloing – Major V7alt Lines

To begin your study of Grant Green dominant chord concepts, you’ll look at how Grant added altered
notes to major key V7 chords. Normally you think of adding altered notes (b9, #9, …) to minor key V7
chords, but you can use them in major keys as well. Here are two examples of Grant using V7alt chords to
create tension and resolution in his major key ii V I soloing lines and phrases.
The first line uses the b9 and #9 over the V7 chord in a ii V I progression in Eb major. Notice how the altered
notes are then resolved to the root note of the underlying chord. As the root is a very strong chord tone, the
strongest in fact, this line has a strong resolution.
This allows for the altered notes to create tension and resolution, rather than just tension, which can cause
your lines to sound out of place without that resolution.
In this second major ii V I line, again the b9 and #9 are used over the V7 chord to create tension. These
notes are resolved to the note Bb. This time that note is acting as the 5th of Ebmaj7, as compared to the
root of Bb7 in the previous line.
Regardless of the placement of that Bb note, it’s again acting to resolve those tension notes, bringing the
line back inside the changes at the same time.
Alongside the altered notes, there’s a raised 7th interval over the Fm7 chord, creating a melodic minor
sound over this chord change. Playing melodic minor over iim7 chords is something that Grant, and many
other great jazz guitarists, did to create tension over that change in the progression.
Grant Green Soloing – Dominant Bebop Lines

Another way that Grant liked to spice up his dominant 7th lines is to use the dominant bebop scale over
that chord.
The dominant bebop scale is a Mixolydian scale with an added 7th note, which is the tension note over the
underlying chord. By using this scale, Grant creates tension over major key V7 chords, which he then
resolves to not leave that tension hanging during the solo.

Mixolydian Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7

Bebop Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 7

In this first bebop scale phrase, the Bb dominant bebop scale is used in bar one, in anticipation of the Bb7
in bar two of the phrase.
Notice that the major 7 interval (A) is placed on the 4th beat of the bar.
As long as you resolve the passing note in a bebop scale you can place it anywhere in the bar you please.
But, if you don’t resolve that note, either down to the b7 or up to the root, it’ll sound out of place no matter
where you use it in your line.
The next bebop line again uses the Bb dominant bebop scale in bar one of a ii V I, where Grant is thinking
V7-V7-I. You’ll notice the A (the bebop note) accented on beat two of the phrase, before being resolved into
beat three on the Ab.

Grant Green Soloing – Minor V7alt Lines

As well as using altered notes over major V7 chords, Grant also brought these tension notes into his minor
key solos. In this section, you’ll look at two ways to bring altered notes into your V7 lines (dim7 arpeggios
and adding b9 and #9 over the underlying chord).
One of Grant’s favorite ways to color V7 chords in a minor key is with a 3-b9 arpeggio, which you can see
in the line below. By playing Bdim7 over G7alt, Grant highlights the 3, 5, b7, and b9 intervals of the
underlying chord.

Bdim7 B D F Ab

Bdim7 played over G7 3 5 b7 b9

When soloing over dominant chords, you can always play a dim7 arpeggio from the 3rd
of that dominant chord to create a b9 arpeggio.
Notice that here Grant resolves that b9 into the root and down to the b3 of Cm7 (Eb).

The next minor V7alt lick uses the b9, #9, and #4 to create tension over that bar in the phrase, before
resolving that tension over Cm7. Starting a V7alt line with a b9-#9-b9 triplet is a common way to add those
tension notes to your lines.
From there, the C# (#4) is used as a lower neighbor tone, resolving up to the D (5) of the underlying chord.
Grant Green Soloing – Solar Solo

Now that you’ve worked these lines on their own, and studied the underlying concepts for each line, you
can bring these lines together over a tune.
In this Solar solo, you’ll use most of the previous lines to create a one-chorus solo etude that you can learn
and work into your own playing over this jazz standard.
Notice the double-time lick in the last phrase, which is a lick you’ve already learned, though this time
played twice as fast to fit into the space given to those chords. When working on fast licks, such as 16th-
note phrases, you can often just take a normal lick and play it twice as fast rather than learn a whole note
phrase. This approach is being used here to squeeze that lick into two bars, rather than four bars.