How To Solo Over Static Dominant Chords (L#17-18-19)

Here’s a series of lessons on bass soloing over static dominant chords, which is something I had problems with when I first started soloing --a long time ago!

At the time, I was not aware of or really comfortable with the various substitutions I could use. Therefore, I was kinda ‘stuck’ playing arpeggios, which is better than playing random notes and does sound good, but there’s so much more you can do!

So, what I’m doing in the first lesson is take a C7 chord and start playing only notes contained in the C7 arpeggio because, again, that’s not a bad thing at all, as long as you also know and practice other options available to you. If you haven’t seen my lesson on how to practice arpeggios on the bass, please do so.

When you’re comfortable playing the arpeggio in three different positions, you can start “closing the arpeggio”, i.e. play the notes a semi-tone above and a semi-tone below each note of the arpeggio, which already gives you much more options…

But check out the vids and see some of the numerous options we’ve got to expand our bass solos over static dominant chords.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3