In this exclusive video lesson, virtuoso Daniele Gottardo performs on Jason Sidwell’s track, The Parade and explains his approaches. Jon Bishop is your guide.
ON VIDEO
This month we have a superb masterclass with Italian virtuoso Daniele Gottardo. In the accompanying video Daniele provides a detailed explanation of his approach to playing on Jason’s orchestral rock track, The Parade. It features a medium 120bpm tempo with a straight quaver feel, with four main sections to negotiate: verse, chorus, pre-chorus and middle eight.
The chords and harmony are dense and complex so instead of taking an improvised solo Daniele composed one so he could navigate the changes while allowing for dynamics and emotive articulations. Each chord in the verse is tackled individually to ensure that the harmony is perfectly framed. Certainly, no one scale can be used over The Parade as the key centre continually shifts.
An important theme in Daniele’s approach is the use of scale and arpeggio substitutions. This is a great way to access more complex sounds with a fairly standard palette of scales and arpeggios. For instance in the chorus the A Major triad (A-C#-E) is played over the track’s C7 (C-E-G-Bb); the E note is the 3rd of C, the A note is the 13th and the enharmonic equivalent of C# is Db which functions as a b9 in the context of C7. So overall a rich, C13b9 sound is produced.
For the chorus Daniele composed a definite melody that fits in with the ‘cycle of 5ths’ chord progression; a classic movement found in many great songs, from Autumn Leaves to Killing Me Softly, the Theme From Mash to Parisienne Walkways.
To spice up Daniele’s lines, he adds chromatic notes using semitones from above or below the target note. Chord tones can also be surrounded with chromatic notes; often referred to as ‘enclosure’. The Blues scale is another way to add chromatics and there’s interesting use of it here. Over the Bm7b5 chord, Daniele uses D Blues scale (D-F-G-Ab-A-C) and this overlaying outlines a combined B Locrian Natural 6 sound (B-C-D-F-G-G#/Ab-A), minus an E note.
Another concept used throughout Daniele’s performance is to create tension and then release it. A G# Diminished 7 arpeggio is played over the E7 chord and this provides (via an F note) more tension by creating the E7b9 sound. This Altered Dominant chord can then resolve to the A7, thus releasing the tension. Also, outlining every chord can start to sound predictable so for a change of approach and sound, Daniele plays Pentatonic lines when the key centre remains constant for a few bars.
The middle 8 provides a chance to play D Minor Pentatonic lines, with the 9th (E) added to provide a colourful hexatonic scale (D-E-F-G-A-C). The pre-chorus features some adventurous two-handed tapping. F
