Julian Lage - chromatic tritone lick

Here is a nice passage of chromatic tritones that Julian Lage uses in his version of the Miles Davis classic All Blues.

Artist - Julian Lage

Song - All Blues

In the turnaround section of All Blues, Lage uses descending tritone arpeggios in an ascending chromatic fashion over the turnaround section of his first chorus (D7#9 / Eb7#9 D7#9 / G7 / G7) to wonderfully build tension that releases into the beginning of his second chorus.

Get a pdf of the transcription here.

concept

The pattern of the arpeggio in this lick is a eight note triplet descending from the root to the tritone and then to the next root (12-b5-1). This pattern really gets established in the second half of the first measure starting with the F# natural after ascending from the F natural. At this point it begins to ascend chromatically, all the way to the C# at the end of the second measure.

This pattern continues again for the first half of the third measure at which point it breaks into quick chromatic octaves to reach the tonic (G) near the end of the third measure.

A nice blues phrase, staying in the triplet rhythm, links the third and fourth phrases. At this point the tritone arpeggios are started ascending again this time using the octave, root, tritone pattern (12-1-b5). Again this builds chromatically from G, ultimately ending with a small run to D at which point the next verse begins with a great bluesy phrase.

harmony

The turnaround section of All Blues has a large number of harmonic possibilities due to the linking of the two dominant 7 sharp 9 chords in the first two bars.

The nature of the dominant 7 sharp 9 chord makes pretty much all altered tones fair game, which is why the altered scale is a common sound over these types of chords.