Some licks whisper. This one struts into your solo wearing sunglasses indoors, plays a handful of notes that are technically "wrong," and dares your ear to complain. It won't — because outside playing done right doesn't sound like a mistake, it sounds like you meant it. Loudly.
This is a short Justin Lee Schultz-inspired outside lick for guitar, built on upper-structure triads and chromatic superimposition. A few seconds long, but there's a whole afternoon of theory packed inside — the kind of modern, sophisticated vocabulary that makes people ask "wait, what scale was that?"
How this outside lick works
The trick behind "outside" playing isn't chaos — it's a controlled detour. Instead of noodling the scale that fits your chord, you superimpose a different shape on top of it: an upper-structure triad or arpeggio borrowed from a nearby, deliberately clashing key. Over your home chord, that triad's notes land on tensions and "avoid" notes, and the whole thing goes tense, shimmery, slightly wrong in the best way. The magic is in the timing: you shift outside for a beat or two, then resolve back home by a half step. Tension, then release — the oldest trick in music, wearing a fusion costume.
The concrete takeaway: don't just spray chromatic notes and hope. Pick a target chord tone, then approach it from a half step above or below using a full triad shape rather than a single passing note. That's why this lick sounds composed instead of confused — every "wrong" note is on a short leash, already leaning toward a "right" one. Practice it slowly, land the resolution dead on the beat, and your ear will forgive absolutely everything you did on the way there. For more of the underlying machinery, poke at chromatic approaches and the pentatonic superimposition idea too.
Fair warning: once you can play outside on command, you will do it constantly, at parties, over your grandmother's favourite ballad, everywhere. I take zero responsibility. Want the tab, the Guitar Pro file, and the original clips? They live on my Patreon.