Jazz Clarinet, Saxophone, Improv, Ear Training
Tag: BLUES
You can coax a lot of interesting new life out of a typical blues lick by playing it on the other side of the beat. This simple technique will breathe fresh vitality and variety into your playing without losing unity and coherence. Read on to learn how it’s done.
As you look through charts of blues tunes, you discover innumerable dominant sevenths serving as one chords (tonics). Music theoreticians explain: “Many blues melodies are in the Mixolydian Mode: They use a major scale, but with a lowered seventh degree. This is harmonized with a dominant seventh chord whose root is the tonic of the song. The lowered seventh degree is referred to as ‘the first blues note.’”
A far more succinct, accurate, and readily digestible explanation is: “The Mixolydian Mode begins and ends on SO,” so the scale is best described this way: Continue reading “The Tonic Dominant Seventh Chord”
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The blues idiom offered early twentieth century musicians a new way to share deep emotional feelings vigorously and honestly.
A hundred thirty years earlier, Mozart had reveled in the fresh, airy lightness of the major tonality which superseded stolid Renaissance modal forms around 1600.
Periodic innovations like these keep music vibrant and invigorating. Unfortunately, too many of today’s musicians bloat their playing with endless, unimaginative, repetitive blues licks. Sure, blues licks can add a funky edge, but overuse of these clichés leads to tiresome monotony.
(And so on, and so on….Well, you get the idea!)
CRAIG BUHLER JAZZ 