Crushing Minor Lines

Joe Pinnavaia shows how to build fresh, modern minor lines over two-chord vamps, using the Dm–Ebm changes of Miles Davis' "So What" as the vehicle. Inspired by the outside sound of improvisers like Michael Brecker — and coming from his own rock-fusion background — Joe works through note choices, phrasing and tension-and-release ideas you can carry into soloing over full chord changes.

What's covered

• Getting comfortable with a backing track: feel, downbeat vs. offbeat phrasing, and honing in on chord tones
• Pentatonics — blue-note additions, extended pentatonics, three-note shapes, and sidestepping for chromaticism
• Mixing scales, modes and triads — finding every triad inside one region of the fretboard
• Building tension with harmonic minor, melodic minor, hybrid scales (blues + Dorian), chromatics and the diminished scale
• Superimposing pentatonics from related minor chords for different textures
• Triad pairs — two-string and three-string forms with inversions, and how to weave them into lines
• A full solo over the track with a breakdown recapping every concept

The course is divided into 6 lessons plus an intro and recap, with tabbed examples throughout. Joe provides a link to the funk-feel backing track from Quist's YouTube channel, and you can explore other styles if you prefer a straight-ahead jazz feel. Includes 18 pages of PDF and 7 Guitar Pro files. If you want to add new elements to your improvisation and create hipper minor lines, this course will get you up and running.