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Kid Charlemagne - Larry Carlton
This is an absolutely legendary solo, and even though I discovered it was actually compiled from two separate takes, I still find it pretty darned impressive!
The key to it is that Carlton adds a lot of chord-based playing to the more familiar rock sounds. The phrases are a mixture of blues scale ideas that aren't necessarily chord based, eg bars 1-4, and (often triadic) ideas which clearly are, eg bar 7, and especially bar 5 - check out the way Larry deals with the 2/4 bar! Sometimes, as with the phrases between bars 7-10, the two approaches seem to exist alongside each other. Bar 9 is a great example - it starts out as an Emin pentatonic idea, but incorporates the notes of the D Major triad when that chord appears in the second half of the bar.
There are a couple a bursts of out-and-out jazz playing in the solo too. Over the Bb7 in bar 13, Carlton plays a cool, angular phrase, which could be seen as coming from the Bb Lydian Dominant scale (mode 4 of F melodic minor, R,2,3,#4,5,6,b7). The other good example is the phrase at bar 17. This basically travels through two pentatonic scales (Emin and Cmaj) but the addition of Bb and G# passing notes gives it a jazzy flavour.
Finally, the icing on the cake is Larry's impeccable string bending - every bend is perfectly in tune and he makes great use of pre-bends (eg bending up to the required pitch before picking, then releasing it after picking) - check out bars 7, 17, and 19 for examples of this.
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This is an absolutely legendary solo, and even though I discovered it was actually compiled from two separate takes, I still find it pretty darned impressive!
The key to it is that Carlton adds a lot of chord-based playing to the more familiar rock sounds. The phrases are a mixture of blues scale ideas that aren't necessarily chord based, eg bars 1-4, and (often triadic) ideas which clearly are, eg bar 7, and especially bar 5 - check out the way Larry deals with the 2/4 bar! Sometimes, as with the phrases between bars 7-10, the two approaches seem to exist alongside each other. Bar 9 is a great example - it starts out as an Emin pentatonic idea, but incorporates the notes of the D Major triad when that chord appears in the second half of the bar.
There are a couple a bursts of out-and-out jazz playing in the solo too. Over the Bb7 in bar 13, Carlton plays a cool, angular phrase, which could be seen as coming from the Bb Lydian Dominant scale (mode 4 of F melodic minor, R,2,3,#4,5,6,b7). The other good example is the phrase at bar 17. This basically travels through two pentatonic scales (Emin and Cmaj) but the addition of Bb and G# passing notes gives it a jazzy flavour.
Finally, the icing on the cake is Larry's impeccable string bending - every bend is perfectly in tune and he makes great use of pre-bends (eg bending up to the required pitch before picking, then releasing it after picking) - check out bars 7, 17, and 19 for examples of this.
Download the sheet music
< Back