12 Bar Blues Improvisation Course
We explore the core elements of improvisation such as: chord tone soloing, approach patterns, target tones and chromatic passing tones.
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12 Bar Blues Improvisation Course
We explore the core elements of improvisation such as: chord tone soloing, approach patterns, target tones and chromatic passing tones.
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”.
The 12 bar blues is the most common blues chord progression. In it’s most basic form, it contains just the I, the IV and the V chords of the given key.
Now that you understand the basic blues form, it’s time to create the more interesting and sophisticated jazz blues progression.
Chord tone soloing is the process of creating improvised lines predominantly or exclusively with the primary tones of the chord.
In this lesson we will take our study of chord tone soloing a step further by incorporating triplets and swing 8th notes into our improvised lines.
We are going to combine out knowledge of chord tone soloing with approach patterns, enclosures, and non-diatonic passing tones.
Now you have an understanding of a basic improvised line, we will now take it a step further with non diatonic passing tones and chromaticism.
With your knowledge of chord tone soloing, the blues scale is now just another dimension that you can add to your solo, instead of the whole solo!
Let's use the notes of the minor blues scale, the major blues scale and the extended blues scale to create different types of blues licks of riffs.
“Straight no Chaser” is most often played in the key of F. Its very closely related to the standard jazz blues so learn that progression first.
In this lesson we are going to explore the Wynton Kelly recording of the tune "Sassy" which is a 12 bar blues in the key of F.
Preciously, we have just explored swing 8th-notes and triplets. In this part of the solo, we explore Wynton Kelly's use of 16th-note lines.
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12 Bar Blues Lesson Supplement File Type: pdf
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“Straight No Chaser” – Jazz Blues Form File Type: pdf
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Jazz Blues Voicings File Type: pdf
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The Major Blues Scale File Type: pdf
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