I need to learn this awesome song, most definitely not note for note because lets face it - the bass playing in this is friggin awesomeness and WAY out of my league for now - but i want to play more than just root notes. So, the main verse bounces around between guitar chords C#maj7 and Dmaj7 and from what I’ve found the song is in the key of A. My question is, when the guitar is playing C#maj7, my root note is the C# - what scale can I play under that to make it sound more interesting. And again for the Dmaj7 - root note is D so what scale do I play??
What a nice jam. To me a C# minor pentatonic sounds nice over the first chord (C#-E-F#-G#-B) you can add some chromatic walks in there for spice. Then over the Dmaj7 hitting the notes in the chord (D-F#-A-C#) will get you started. I’m really a hack when it comes to theory, but it sounded decent to me.
+1 to @dlamson13 -
If you want more scale for the Dmaj7 chord, you can use a combo of the chord tones (specified in @dlamson13’s comment) and the major pentatonic scale:
D - E - F# - A - B -D
Great band, great groove.
