The Blues Scales Dan Greenblatt Pdf 17
Lalo Scalf
Blues progressions actually do not conform to standard western musical harmony, you are correct by saying that improvisations will sound strange when playing diatonic major modes over the equivalent of chords.
My personal approach to improvising over blues scales is to rely heavily on the key's minor pentatonic and blues scale, while adding in chord tones from the IV7 and V7 chord where necessary rather than using the other extensions of the scales that you would normally play over those chords (5th mode harmonic minor, etc) which can sound a little strange because they sound like they take you into other keys (bVII major over the IV7 chord etc).
If you are going down a slightly jazzier path, you can implement whole half and half whole diminished scales over the chords and as long as you end up resolving onto a chord tone of the current chord (I III V or VII normally, often the major 9th as well) you can get a pretty good sound.
Another thing to note is that you can basically play anything you want to on a blues as long as you take the above note into consideration, end up in the right place and play it with feeling. After all, blues songs are all about the feeling (not the complication of harmony).
You could call it a V-V-V with key changes, a IV-IV-IV , or whatever. The fact is that in a blues progression there are no key changes or modulations in a particular verse. The chords are related to each other,so in key A, with I, IV and V, it becomes A, D and E. Blues traditionally uses dominant 7th chords to get the 'feel', rather than a 7th just on the V chord as in most other styles of music. The 7th on the IV chord is probably the most telling, as it sounds like the music is going to modulate, but of course, it doesn't. Using Amin. pent. notes will also give a min 3rd against the maj.3 of the given chord. This again is the essence of the blues - although often that particular note is bent up to sweeten it, or not, as the whim takes.
If the progression is indeed I-IV-V, then it's not a 12 bar, but just a 'three chord trick'.The standard 12 bar is the sequence for Rock Around the Clock, amongst thousands of other examples. There are many other answers to questions similar to yours on this site. Have a good look at the answers for more clues. There is no point in elaborating further in this answer.Keep playing, and work with the adage that if it sounds good, it is, even if technically some rule is saying 'you shouldn't play it like that'.
It is just common practice to call a blues with chords I7, IV7, and V7 a I-IV-V blues, simply because the chords are built on the first, the fourth and the fifth note of the (mixolydian) scale starting on the I. And it is understood that all chords are dominant-seventh chords (unless you're playing a minor blues).
There are in fact lots of scales that can be played over a I-IV-V blues. It is not wrong to play minor pentatonic scales with roots I, IV and V over such a progression, even though especially on the IV chord it can sound a bit strange due to the b3 of the IV chord (which is the b6 of the I chord). Another straightforward choice is the mixolydian scale, again with roots I, IV, and V, depending on the current chord. And every time a chord can be interpreted as a V-chord for the next chord, alterations can be added (e.g. by using the diminished half-whole scale or the altered scale). And also don't forget the major pentatonic scale, which also works great over the blues!
Because the way blues works is that the I7 is treated as a tonic, even though it's not tonic in the normal sense. But the V7 > I7 helps to reinforce that it actually is a tonic chord in the overall progression, because a V7 always has a dominant role, regardless of whether it resolves to a I7, Im7, Imaj7, I6, or whatever. Another way to look at it, is that you are constructing a I IV V, except instead of major chords, you're doing chord substitution on each.
To learn how to improvise on the basic blues, the best place is Dan Greenblatt's book "The Blues Scales: Essential Tools". In the first chapter he has you using I major blues scale on the I chord, and using I minor blues scale on the IV7 and V7 chords. Then, he expands on this later on and adds some additional things.
On a 12 bars blues in A, you can play A minor pentatonic or blues scale trough the whloe blues, once you are confident with that you can play A major blues scale(same notes as F#minor blues scale) over the I7 chord and and A minor blues scale over IV7 and V7 chords is a great way to start geting more sounds into the blues. After you can switch between those two scales you can combine the notes of the 2 scales.
The term blues scale refers to several different scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. A blues scale is often formed by the addition of an out-of-key "blue note" to an existing scale, notably the flat fifth addition to the minor pentatonic scale. However, the heptatonic blues scale can be considered a major scale with altered intervals.
The first known published instance of this scale is Jamey Aebersold's How to Play Jazz and Improvise Volume 1 (1970 revision, p. 26), and Jerry Coker claims that David Baker may have been the first educator to organise this particular collection of notes pedagogically as a scale to be taught in helping beginners evoke the sound of the blues.[4]
In the Movable do solfge, the hexatonic major blues scale is solmized as "do-re-me-mi-sol-la"; In the La-based minor movable do solfge, the hexatonic minor blues scale is solmized as "la-do-re-me-mi-sol".
An essentially nine-note blues scale is defined by Benward and Saker as a chromatic variation of the major scale featuring a flat third and seventh degrees (in effect substitutions from Dorian mode) which, "alternating with the normal third and seventh scale degrees are used to create the blues inflection. These 'blue notes' represent the influence of African scales on this music."[12]
Hit songs in a blues key include, "Rock Me"..., "Jumpin' Jack Flash"..., "Higher Ground"..., "Purple Haze"..., "I Can See for Miles"..., "After Midnight"..., "She's a Woman"..., "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress"..., "Pink Cadillac"..., "Give Me One Reason"..., and many others.[13]
In jazz, the blues scale is used by improvising musicians in a variety of harmonic contexts. It can be played for the entire duration of a twelve bar blues progression constructed off the root of the first dominant seventh chord. For example, a C hexatonic blues scale could be used to improvise a solo over a C blues chord progression. The blues scale can also be used to improvise over a minor chord. Jazz educator Jamey Aebersold describes the sound and feel of the blues scale as "funky," "down-home," "earthy," or "bluesy."[14][page needed]
If your only knowledge of Western music came from typical university music theory curricula, however, you might never guess that the blues even existed, much less get a sense of its importance. Theory pedagogy must grow to accommodate the blues, the same way that our culture has.
In this treatise, I set out to explain the characteristic chords and scales of the blues, and I argue that they comprise an alternative system of tonality from European common-practice tonality. I further propose that we teach blues tonality as a distinct category from major or minor, combining elements of both with elements not found in either. Andy Jaffe (2011) divides Western harmony into three distinct systems: diatonic harmony as described by tonal theory, modal harmony, and blues. I believe that mainstream Western music theory pedagogy should adopt this classification scheme, and present the three systems as equally fundamental. Popular musicians, who tend to be self-taught, already consider blues to be a core concept, a chord-scale system on an equal footing with common-practice tonality (Green, 2002, p. 43). For example, like many rock guitarists, I learned the pentatonic and blues scales long before I learned the major scale.
Before we can understand and teach blues tonality, we need to define what we are talking about. I will argue that blues tonality consists of a scale, the blues scale, accompanied by microtonal blue notes. Blues harmony comprises chords whose roots are blues scale notes. In this treatise, I have deliberately chosen to only touch lightly on the rhythmic, timbral and formal aspects of blues. These aspects of the music are critically important. I have chosen to focus only on blues harmony because it is so conspicuously absent from harmonic theory and pedagogy.
The blues treats dominant seventh chords in a strikingly different way from common-practice European tonal harmony. In the blues, dominant sevenths can be tonic chords, destinations for harmonic closure.
In blues harmonic practice, unresolved tritones can appear over any root, sometimes generating an impetus for motion and sometimes not. A one-chord blues can be based on a seventh chord over a repeating bass figure, and can easily accommodate extensions beyond the seventh. The addition of the sharp ninth merely adds colour to the tonic in this case, rather than a tension requiring resolution (van der Bliek, 2007, p. 346).
Since the blues combines elements of diatonic major and minor tonality, some authors understand it as a kind of modal mixture. Ralph Turek and Daniel McCarthy (2013) see blues as arising from the adding of the flat seventh to diatonic chords:
The lowered seventh present above each root imparts a dominant seventh quality to each chord. The blues and its offspring are the only Western vernacular music in which the Mm7 is routinely divorced from its function as a dominant in need of resolution (p. 584).
If there is a single element unifying all forms of Western popular music, it is underlying groove structure. Anne Danielsen (2006) describes a groove as a short repeating cell with complex internal rhythmic structure and without a larger linear or hierarchical structure. Grooves form the substrate of songs in rock, R&B and other Black American musics. In funk, hip-hop, and dance music, grooves are both the foreground and the background. Blues tonality pairs well with funk grooves, and Tony Bolden (2020) convincingly locates the foundation of funk in the blues. The historical origins of blues tonality are a mystery, as I discuss later, but it may well have emerged hand-in-hand with African-American groove structures generally.
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