Players
Larry Carlton
Larry Carlton is the guitarist that session musicians study. His work on thousands of records through the 1970s and 80s - Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson, the Crusaders - defined what sophisticated guitar playing sounded like in a studio context. He bridged jazz harmony and blues feeling more seamlessly than anyone, and his approach to chord tone soloing over complex changes remains the most practical model for guitarists who want to play over real harmony rather than just one scale.
Start with A Dorian
Carlton's primary minor voice. The raised 6th gives his minor key playing a jazz sophistication that natural minor cannot achieve.
Chord tone soloing over complex changes
Carlton's defining skill is his ability to follow chord changes that most guitarists would treat as a single key. On a Steely Dan track, the chords might move through five different harmonic areas in eight bars - each chord implying a different scale or mode. Carlton identifies the most characteristic note of each chord as it arrives and targets it, creating a melody that outlines the harmony rather than sitting on top of it.
The mechanism is identifying the 3rd and 7th of each chord. These two notes define a chord's quality more than any others — they determine whether it is major, minor, dominant, or half-diminished. When Carlton's melodic line passes through the 3rd or 7th of each chord as that chord arrives, the listener hears the harmony defined in the melody even without the rhythm section. This is the jazz approach to following chord changes, applied to the guitar.
The 3rd and 7th as chord tone targets
Dorian: the jazz-minor home
Carlton's default minor scale is Dorian, not natural minor. The difference is the 6th degree: natural minor has a flat 6th, Dorian has a natural (major) 6th. That one note completely changes the character of the scale - natural minor sounds dark and resolved, Dorian sounds searching and bittersweet.
In a jazz context, Dorian is the correct scale over a minor 7th chord. The chord itself contains root, flat 3rd, 5th, and flat 7th. Dorian adds the 2nd, 4th, and natural 6th as passing tones - all of which are consonant with the chord and provide melodic options beyond what the chord tones alone offer. Carlton uses all seven notes of Dorian fluidly, treating the non-chord tones as genuine melodic material rather than notes to avoid.
Mixolydian over dominant chords
Over dominant 7th chords, Carlton moves to Mixolydian. The scale's major 3rd and flat 7th match the chord exactly, and the added 2nd, 4th, and 6th give him passing tones that create smooth voice leading between chord tones. His Mixolydian playing has a blues feeling that comes from targeting the flat 7th and bending toward it from below - a technique borrowed directly from blues vocabulary but applied over jazz harmony.
The blend of Mixolydian and blues vocabulary over dominant chords is Carlton's most signature sound. He treats the flat 7th as both a jazz chord tone and a blues note simultaneously - it functions in both systems, which is why it sounds so natural when he plays it. The vocabulary is not jazz or blues. It is both, happening at the same time.
A melodic minor: the sophisticated option
Carlton reaches for melodic minor over minor chords when he wants a jazz sound with more upward momentum than Dorian. The raised 6th and 7th create strong leading tones.
Blues feeling within jazz harmony
What separates Carlton from purely jazz guitarists is that his jazz harmonic knowledge is always filtered through a blues sensibility. He bends notes. He uses vibrato expressively rather than clinically. He phrases with space and breath, leaving room for the groove to breathe. The blues vocabulary does not disappear when the harmony gets complex - it adapts.
On a minor 7th chord, he might approach the flat 3rd from a half step below with a blues bend rather than playing it directly. The note is the same chord tone a jazz player would target, but the approach - the bend, the slide into it - is pure blues. This combination is what made him indispensable as a session guitarist: he could play the right jazz notes while making them feel like blues, which is what most non-jazz music actually needed.
Tone as a theory choice
Carlton's ES-335 through a Dumble amplifier is one of the most recognizable guitar tones in recorded music. But the tone is not separate from the theory - it is an extension of it. The warm, singing midrange of that combination amplifies sustain and makes chord tones ring longer. A note targeted on the 3rd of a chord sustains into the next chord, creating a natural voice leading effect that a brighter, more percussive tone would cut off.
His use of volume knob swells to remove the attack from notes produces a tone that enters already at full sustain - the note appears without a transient, sounding like a voice entering mid-phrase rather than a picked string. This technique makes his chord tone targets sound inevitable rather than arrived at. The note was already there. You just noticed it.
Explore Carlton's scales on the fretboard
Load A Dorian and find the natural 6th (F#). Compare it to A natural minor where that note is F. That single half step is the difference between dark resolution and searching sophistication.