Listen to Danny Federici’s fantastic organ solo on “Livin’ in the Future,” from Bruce Springsteen’s most recent CD, Magic. In his solo, Danny effortlessly switched between single-note lines and chords. How does he do this? When constructing a solo, there’s a constant thought process. It might be that you’re thinking of what scale you can draw from at a particular moment, or you could be thinking about the notes that make up the underlying chord. In this solo, you hear an emphasis on the chords, peppered with ideas drawn from pentatonic and blues scales. A particularly sweet cascading chord melody happens in bars 3 and 4 of the solo, which is shown here in Example 1. Danny uses chord inversions to create this cool descending phrase, but it’s made up of only two chords: Am and G.
From measure 5 on, Danny uses a more linear concept, but you can still feel the underlying chords in the melody. An often-asked question is whether to think of scales or chords when soloing. Everyone’s musical mind works a bit differently, but I like to think about the chord tones (I sometimes visualize the chord shapes on the keyboard), with the contour of the scale in the background. This way, I can emphasize the chord tones while bridging them together using scales.
For example, bars 5 and 6 in the full transcription (shown in Example 2) feature a soulful line based on a pentatonic scale. What’s interesting is that the chord is Dm, yet Danny’s melody seems to be based on the A minor pentatonic. The result is an emphasis on jazzier chord extensions of Dm: the seventh, ninth, and eleventh. You can exploit these juxtapositions to get more sounds out of scales, chords, and patterns you already know.
Ultimately, you want to get to the point where the melodic idea pops into your head and pours out of your fingers and through the keys. To get there, it never hurts to think about what these melodies are made of.
Ex. 1. This groovy descending phrase from Danny Federici’s solo on “Livin’ in the Future” may sound complex, but he just alternates between inversions of two chords: Am and G.
Ex. 2. Though the chord is Dm at this point in “Livin’ in the Future,” Danny keeps on using the A minor pentatonic scale, and since Am is the tonic chord of the tune, it works great.