Music Lesson: Analyzing the Solo of "Love That Man"

I'm now going to talk you through the solo of the tune you just played, "Love That Man," and discuss the chord scale relationships and your choice of notes in the solo.

Understanding the Chords

You'll notice that I just suggested a blues scale in D for the first four bars, even though there are four different chords there. That's because I'm thinking of these four chords as being in the key of D minor.

Chord Progression

• D minor
• G7

As you know, those chords are brother and sister. You can use the same scale across both, but they're not going to C, as you might expect this 2, 5 to do. They're going to G minor.

You could think of that in the same key:

• If D minor is I (one),
• then G minor is IV (four).

For that reason, we can treat these four bars as being in the key of D minor and play a D blues scale on top. We can stay on that blues scale for the G minor.

Alternative Options

It doesn't sound wrong, even though it's not perhaps the obvious choice. You might think something more G minor would fit better there. You could, if you wish, play a Dorian scale on D and G7, and then play a Dorian scale on G.

Bars 3 and 4:

• C7
• G minor
• E7

These two styles represent opposite methods:

• The first one (horizontal): Where you just play in the key of D minor.
• The second one (vertical): Where you're changing your choice of notes to fit the IV chord and tapping into the Dorian scale on G instead of staying on the D blues scale.

Transition to Dominant Seventh Chords

Four bars later, we arrive at four dominant seventh chords:

• F7
• Bb7
• Db7
• C7

Some of them have ninths in the voicings, but they're basically dominant seventh chords. This should tell you that they're in a blues tonality.

Key of F Blues

Basically, we're now in the key of F, but it's F blues because of the flattened seventh on the F7 chord, rather than F6 or F major seven, which is where we're going to arrive in bar eight.

For at least three bars, you can play the F blues scale. Then, the same applies over the Bb and the Db7 and C7. This creates a very bluesy sound. We can do that because every chord is a dominant seventh, which usually signifies a blues tonality.

Transitioning Back to D Minor

However, when we get to bar eight, we need to think about how we go back to the D minor chord for the repeat of the A section. That's why we have the A7 in there , it creates a perfect cadence back to D minor.

Suggested Scales

I've suggested the F major pentatonic there because we're kind of no longer in blues tonality. We've moved to an F6 chord.

You can hear how that will work pretty well over A7 as well. It's worth remembering that the F major pentatonic, which I've just played, has the same notes as D minor pentatonic, which we started out with, so there's no contradiction there.

In the second time bar, you need to have an E7 chord in bar 8 to take you to the bridge, which starts on A minor.

So that's as much analysis as I'm going to do in this lesson. If you want the full story, do check out the PDF.