Lesson 31

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Lesson 31 TEF's

Notes to Lesson 31

After seven weeks of scales and arpeggios, we're all dying for a change, aren't we?  Sure we are!  And I'm sure that Mickey must have known that as now we get to put some of our scales and arpeggios to use.  Mickey chose that ubiquitous of musical forms, our old friend the Blues, for this. 

Mickey says that the majority of the Blues are played in the keys of Ab, Bb, C, F, and G.   When I read that I thought "where does he get this data from?"  Then I put it into 1955 combo and big band perspective.  We all know that in the raw, "get down and get dirty" guitar and mouth harp blues that put Chicago, Memphis, and Kansas City on the musical map, our guitar friendly keys of E and A and even B get the lion's share of use.   These blues are smooth, cool jazz blues that borrows the 12-bar harmony. 

Lesson 32 analyzes this lesson so we don't have to go into the "head" part of the lesson now.  We can just play and learn.  Let me describe what I've done for these lessons.  As the rhythm part, I've taken the three "Bop Blues Progressions" from Lesson 21 and matched them 1 with Blues No. 1, 2 with Blues No. 2, and 3 with Blues No. 3.  And as an additional bonus I've written a original Blues backup using Mickey's philosophy and going back to our "chunk" rhythm.  By changing the substitutions and the rhythm style we add new life to these simple melodies. 

Extra Credit (yeah sure!):   Take Mickey's melodies and without changing the order of notes,  change the rhythm.  For example, in Measure 1 of Blues No. 1, instead of the original, try these suggestions:

Changing the Rhythm of the Melody

Use your imagination and your developing ear to help you.  Another method is to memorize the original melody and let your "mind's orchestra" improvise on it.  Then write down what you're hearing.  Sounds difficult, but it gets easier every time to do it.

Another idea is to take one of your favorite blues progressions and play it against these melodies.

Just keep it FUN!