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Lessons With Tony Smotherman
FEBRUARY 21, 2021
Charlie Christian: Going to the Source
JUNE 3, 2011

by David Hamburger

Charlie Christian was an unabashedly guitaristic player. Hot to go with one of the rst commercially
available electric guitar and ampli er rigs from Gibson, Christian cranked out burning blues riffs and proto- 5 Progressions Blues Guitar Players
bop licks with impeccable tone and timing. In just two incandescent years with Benny Goodman’s sextet MUST Know
FEBRUARY 20, 2021
at the turn of the 1940s Christian established himself as the de nitive jazz six-stringer of a generation
before succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of 23.

Whether with Goodman or at after hours sessions at Minton’s in Harlem, Christian’s astonishing eighth-
note lines careened their way through routine cycles of dominant 7th chords with off-kilter chromaticism
and upper extension 9s b9s, and 13s while his vamping, ri ng and other blues ideas show a sure-footed,
swinging sensibility and un agging energy.
3 Free Travis Picking Guitar Lessons
Charlie Christian’s music is the perfect remedy for any guitarist fearful of committing jazz. He favored a From Muriel Anderson
handful of fretboard shapes, and each one can be seen as an up the-neck version of a familiar chord FEBRUARY 19, 2021

voiced on the top four strings. While his ideas were hardly simplistic, Christian didn’t so much play scales
or arpeggios as work from guitaristic major chord shapes, adding in the 6s 7s, and 9s that sounded good
to him and connecting it all up with some slinky chromatic passing tones. Once you see how Charlie
visualized these shapes up and down the neck, you can do it too, and save those three-notes-perstring,
three-octave arpeggios for another day. Right now, let’s go to the source and see what licks we can glean
from the father of swingin’ jazz guitar, and then look at how he would put them together into phrases and
ultimately, entire solos. 8 Free African Style Guitar Lessons
FEBRUARY 18, 2021
Read on for the full guitar lesson including audio, tab, charts, and more…

Guitar Lesson

http://true re.com/audio-guitar-lessons/charlie-christian.mp3

Click here for the power tab for this guitar lesson. 4 Free Guitar Lessons From Tommy
Emmanuel & John Knowles
Chord Shapes FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Ex. 1 a shows the top four notes of a barred E chord. To this fundamental sound Christian added in the 6
and the b3 (Ex. 1 b) in order to swing in a I-chord situation, usually a major-6th chord.

Ex. 1 c shows how Christian tweaked this same basic shape into a dominant -7th, -9th or – 13th sound by
keeping the 6, adding in the b7 in two places, and including the 9 on top.
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You can think of Ex. 1 d as the top four strings of a barred 07 chord. To this shape Christian adds in the 9
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in two places and usually only plays the bB (on the G string) during descending licks (Ex. 1 e) .

Ex. 1 f shows the top four strings of a barred C chord, another shape Christian uses primarily over a I
chord. Ex. 1 g shows how he adds a 6 (and a high 5) to the basic chord shape. Enter your email address:

Finally, Ex. 1 h is the top four strings of a familiar 9th~chord form. Ex. 1 i shows how Christian adds the 5
on the D string and the 6 (or 13) on top, making this another shape that works over dominant-7th, -9th and
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-13th chords.

The cream of Charlie Christian’s studio recorded output, all done between 1939 and 1941 with the Benny
Goodman Sextet, is available on a pair of Columbia Jazz Masterworks reissues, Charlie Christian: Genius
of the Electric Guitar and The Benny Goodman Sextet Featuring Charlie Christian. The examples that
follow are typical of the kinds of sounds Christian would use to solo on tunes like “Rose Room,” “I’ve
Found A New Baby,” “Seven Come Eleven” and “Flying Home,” all of which can be found on these CDs.

First Moves
Examples 2a-2d are a collection of moves using the notes shown in Ex 1b. They may look and sound
familiar in a T-Bone Walker or B.B. King kind of way.

Examples 3a-3d are in the same position but with the dominant-7th scale tones of Ex 1c added in. Starting
off with the low b7 and jumping to the bB is a characteristic Christian move, as is jumping past the root to
hit the 9 on the high string.

With Examples 4a-4d we get into more Christianesque territory. Our man invariably smooths things out
with the chromatic passing tone from the 9 to the root, as in the rst three riffs. To nger Examples 4a and
4b, you want to get that D at the 7th fret as a stretch back with your 1st nger before returning to position
with your 3rd nger on the 10th fret.

Ex. 5a gives us an “upper position” in which to get some of the same major-6th moves as in Ex. 2. The 4-
b3-bB embellishment in Examples 5b and 5c is a favorite Christian move. He also grabs the 6 and/or the 9
in all of these examples and kicks off Ex. 5d with the slick chromatic descent of 5-j,5-4-3.

If you’ve ever camped a 9th chord you’ll recognize the outline of the licks in the next examples. What’s
particularly inventive is how Christian turns this familiar chord shape into a linear sound. Ex. 6a is the
basic arpeggio, Ex. 6b is a busier triplet version that nds time to include the b3 and the root on the Band
G strings as well. Ex. 6c offers the same chromatic move as the beginning of Ex. 5d-5- b5-4-3-as a kickoff
on the fourth string (try using all downstrokes to get from the F to the high G’). Ex. 6d begins with the
chromatic move root-7-b7.

Implications
The harmonic landscape was a little simpler in the swing era; in fact the playing of Charlie Christian and
some of his fellow forward thinking “modernists” initiated the top-down trend towards the bebop era’s
chord progressions. What made Christian’s playing so revelatory was that, when soloing over the straight-
forward changes in Benny Goodman’s group, Christians implied much more-in fact, implied the kinds of
changes that soon began turning up in the compositions of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and others.
Let’s check out how Charlie runs the changes by looking at his moves over a few bars at a time.

Examples 7 and 8 show Charlie’s angle on a II7-V7-I. In both examples, note the characteristic move in the
second bar: On the V, Christian liked to duck down two frets to spell out a descending IVm triad-against
the V this gives him the 11, b9 and b7 as a lead-in back to the I. Ex. 9 shows another set of positions for a
similar kind of II7-V7-I7 situation, kicking off with a dominant-9th arpeggio.

Ex. 10 can be heard as a I-IV VI-II, II-V or V-I change; however you slice it, it’s typical of the kind of lines
Charlie would run on the bridge of a tune like “Honeysuckle Rose” or Sextet originals based on “I Got
Rhythm” like “Seven Come Eleven.” The shape of the opening line looks a little like the top of an open-
position A7 chord moved up the neck.

Taking It Home
Now let’s look at a 32-bar solo a la Charlie to see how all of these various elements come together. Ex. 11
shows a chorus of “Rhythm” changes closely based on Charlie’s solo in “Flying Home.” While the A-section
changes to Swing-era tunes like this may look formidable, many musicians of the era simply treated these
changes as vamps over which to blow blues licks. With such an approach there are suddenly vast open
spaces to ll, and phrasing becomes key. In contrast, it’s clear why some jazz folks refer to the B section
as the “release”; it’s a relief to have to channel your thoughts into a different chord change every two bars
after 16 bars of vamping on the I. Christian makes the most of this opportunity for contrast by opening
with a series of major-6th phrases so evenly placed as to have an almost vocal quality. He punctuates the
start of his second A section with a particularly cool b3-6 double-stop.

At the bridge, Charlie unleashes a solid wall of eighth-notes, and yet pauses for breath before kicking off
the second four bars–a major phrasing concept. Dig in particular the monumentally chromatic descent
over the F chord that takes him down into the 1st-fret position in the blink of an eye. The nal eight bars
include a half-step reverse bend, a brief glimpse of the future that electricity will bring to the guitar.

Once you begin to grasp how Christian assembled his vocabulary into a bigger musical picture, try
improvising over these chord changes by swapping in other moves from the examples above, or applying
these moves to similar tunes. Using Christian’s “mini-chord” approach can ultimately serve as a route not
only to the stylistic nuances of the swing era, but to a better understanding of the guitar itself.

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