“I'm constantly thinking melodies. Now, to add interest to those melodies, obviously you have to know what things can be superimposed over a chord, and I will think of extended arpeggios and the upper estensions. If I'm playing very vertically, I will invariably start to include certaing passing notes which imply certain scales -- like a melodic minor scale against a C minor chord, or diminished scales, something like that. But I'm not thinking of a scale at that specific moment. I'm thinking of the notes as surrounding that chord -- because I know how each of the twelve notes in music sound against a C minor seventh, for instance.”

—  Lee Ritenour

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 114, 0-679-74275-1]

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Lee Ritenour1
American jazz guitarist, session musician, and composer 1952

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