MELODIC MUSE

STORY TELLING - Describing a chord progression in a solo 

- Andy Timmons

OVER THE NEXT two columns, I’d like to discuss my guitar solo in “Welcome Home,” a tune I had written and recorded for the 2016 Andy Timmons Band album, Theme From a Perfect World. The solo is played over what is basically a repeating four-bar, three-chord progression, but the approach I took for the solo was to craft lines that are melodic and hooky and played in an emotive, expressive way, while also targeting elements of the chords, so that the melody clearly dictates, or describes, the underlying progression.