12 Bar Blues Improvisation

In this course we explore the basic blues form, the jazz blues form, and then we dive straight into improvisation drills and exercises.

The first lesson "Basic 12 Bar Blues" is for those with no previous knowledge of the blues. If you are already familiar with the basic blues form, then jump straight into the lesson on the "Jazz Blues Form".

Whilst the basic 12 bar blues just contains 3 chords, the I, the IV and the V, the jazz blues also incorporates the most common progression in jazz music… the mighty 251 progression:

The concepts covered in the improv lessons can be directly applied to jazz and bossa nova tunes. We take a step-by-step, methodical approach to improvising over the blues which will give you strong foundations for further improv study.

Chord tone soloing is the first step towards learning to improvise on the piano. If you have tried to improvise in the past, and you have found that your improvised lines begin to sound lost and disjointed from the chords, then it’s very likely that you are not paying enough attention to the chord tones.

I provide a number of exercises that may appear to be simple, but in reality it’s training you to work within a very limited scope so that you can master the foundations of improvisation using just chord tones.

Later in the series of blues course, we look at other important aspects of improvisation such as: approach patterns, enclosures, target tones and chromatic passing tones.

We then apply everything we have learnt to the tune "Straight No Chaser".