| Concepts and Origins (by Mick Goodrick) As is often the case with discoveries of this nature, a certain amount of “dumb luck” is necessary, and may provide the catalyst through which the final solution begins to unravel itself. In this case, the “dumb luck catalyst” came in the form of an offhand comment I made to one of the guitarists in my Advanced Guitar Performance lab at Berklee. This student was improvising on a standard tune while another student was comping for him. I believe it was during the ridge that the soloing student made a fairly common mistake that happens quite often with beginning improvisers: as a major 7 chord appears, the student plays the root as his first note in the mid-to-upper register and lets it sustain for a couple of seconds. At the end of the solo, I was critiquing the student, and I pointed out that playing the root as a sustained first note in the mid-to-upper register is really a tension, especially if the comping guitarist plays a major 7 chord. I suggested that playing the major 7 melody note would have been a safer and better sounding choice. And then I said, “Even if you just had a bass player comping for you, most of the time, they'll play the root first on a new chord. So why double the root? A lot of the time, the root is the least important first note for a soloist, since the bass player usually plays it!” The implications of what I said didn't sink in for a few days... “When Iam working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when Ihave finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” —R. Buckminister Fuller How to find a systematic way of studying all five families of 3-part chords simultaneously? Leave out THE ROOT! (Could it be that simple? YES!) Here's how it started to unravel. Let's go back to this: K ce K : & a Cc Cc Cc Cc Now, leave out all the Cs (the root). Here's what you get: D- E- G B°