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    Exploring The Blues

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    diego8durazo
    The document explores the blues musical form and its importance to improvising musicians. It provides examples of standard 12-bar blues progressions in different keys, along with common variations used in jazz like turnarounds, additional chords, and reharmonizations. Recommended chord voicings are also presented for dominant, minor, altered, and diminished seventh chords commonly used in blues and jazz progressions.

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    Exploring The Blues

    Uploaded by

    diego8durazo
    358 views4 pages
    The document explores the blues musical form and its importance to improvising musicians. It provides examples of standard 12-bar blues progressions in different keys, along with common variations used in jazz like turnarounds, additional chords, and reharmonizations. Recommended chord voicings are also presented for dominant, minor, altered, and diminished seventh chords commonly used in blues and jazz progressions.

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    Exploring the Blues

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    The document explores the blues musical form and its importance to improvising musicians. It provides examples of standard 12-bar blues progressions in different keys, along with common variations used in jazz like turnarounds, additional chords, and reharmonizations. Recommended chord voicings are also presented for dominant, minor, altered, and diminished seventh chords commonly used in blues and jazz progressions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    358 views4 pages

    Exploring The Blues

    Uploaded by

    diego8durazo
    The document explores the blues musical form and its importance to improvising musicians. It provides examples of standard 12-bar blues progressions in different keys, along with common variations used in jazz like turnarounds, additional chords, and reharmonizations. Recommended chord voicings are also presented for dominant, minor, altered, and diminished seventh chords commonly used in blues and jazz progressions.

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    Exploring The Blues

    The Blues is one of the most important musical forms to the improvising musician. Jazz and blues have a
    great deal in common, and I think that to understand jazz and it's subtleties and complexities, an
    understanding of the blues is essential. All examples are shown in the Key of F, but can, and should, be
    played in all keys. Follow the link at the bottom of the page to see some phrases which can be used solo
    against a blues.

    Note: This page has nothing to do with "The Serious Guitarist" book.

    The Basic Progression


    Here is a standard 12 bar blues, in what is pretty much it's simplest form.

    The Turnaround
    Notice that the last two bars of the above progression consists of an F7 chord, and that the first four bars does
    too. This creates a situation where we have six consecutive bars of F7 (the I chord). The first variation on the
    basic progression which we are going to explore incorporates a couple of changes which help to relieve the
    monotony of this situation. First of all, we can change to the Bb7 (IV) chord in bar 2, and right back to the I
    chord in bar 3. Secondly, we can add a device at the end of the progression which is known as a "turnaround".
    As the name implies, this is intended to indicate when the form has reached the end, and is to be turned
    around to the top, or beginning. There are many different turnarounds, and we will explore several, but the
    one in the following progression is probably the most common.

    Jazzing It Up
    Jazz players love to explore new harmonic possibilties, and the blues form has been one of the most widely
    used vehicles for this. The next example is still recognizable as a blues, but contains a few more chords than
    the "standard" I, IV, V blues progression. If you were to call a blues at a jazz jam session, these are the kind
    of changes which the players would most likely play.

    Here's another variation which is quite common.

    Mix & Match


    There are literally endless possibilities for reharmonizing a blues. These next examples contain other
    possibilities, and are so far removed from the original progression as to hardly resemble a blues anymore, but
    keep in mind that elements of all the examples shown here can be incorporated within the same tune. A blues
    head (melody) is usually written to reflect specific changes, so while the head is being played, these changes
    should be adhered to fairly closely, but during the solos, there is much freedom to be adventurous with the
    progression. Experiment with mixing and matching chunks of all of the examples on this page, and try
    developing your own.

    Parker Blues
    Charlie Parker has been acredited with this permutation of a blues progression, and it has been used as the
    basis for a number of jazz tunes. Since Charlie was presumably the first to come up with it, it is known as the
    "Parker Blues" progression.

    Minor Blues
    Here is a minor blues progression. I think a minor blues is one of the hippest and bluesiest (is that a word?)
    sounding grooves. Let's switch to the key of C minor for this one.

    We can create more movement by interjecting some ii - V's. This technique can be applied to other
    progressions. Just target a chord with it's V, or ii V, and voila!, instant reharmonization. Try it with some of
    the other progressions shown earlier.

    The Chords
    Here are some recommended voicings for the chords in the above examples.

    Some possibilities for dominant chords. For the most part, in the progressions I have indicated all dominant
    chords as seventh chords, but for added color, 9th and 13th chords may also be used.

    Some possibilities for minor seventh chords. 9th and 11th extensions have been included with some of these.
    These chords will work where Major Seventh chords are called for.

    Here are some altered dominant chords. The VI7 and V7 chords (D7 and C7 respectively in the key of F) are
    good places to use these.

    Some Diminished seventh, and Minor seventh flat 5 chords.

    Here you will find some Blues Phrases.

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