Minor Blues - “Sea Blues” Improvisation (7:50)

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Del curso dictado por University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

305 calificaciones

University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

305 calificaciones

The blues is an American art form and the most important musical form in jazz. Although there are other formal paradigms of the blues, such as 8-bar or 16-bar, this course focuses on different incarnations of the 12-bar blues. There are considerable differences between Early Jazz blues, Swing blues, Bebop blues, Modal blues, and Post Bop blues. Each type has its unique harmonic syntax, melodic vocabulary and, associated with them, improvisational techniques. While other aspects of jazz performance practice have been constantly changing from one stylistic convention to another, the blues has never lost its identity and expressive power, and continues to exert a powerful influence on the harmonic and melodic syntax of jazz. This seven-week course explores important aspects of the blues, blues improvisation, basic keyboard textures, jazz harmonic and melodic syntax. Topics include: (1) Blues Progressions; (2) Blues and Other Scales; (3) Improvisational Tools, and others. This course will also cover valuable theoretical concepts enabling the student to master the art of jazz improvisation. Each topic will be introduced from a practical perspective with the clearly stated goal: to improve one’s improvisational skills. Jazz improvisation is rooted in spontaneity, creativity, self-expression and, at the same time, self-control and order. A unique pedagogical approach based on a one-to-one musical interaction conducted with different instrumentalists will help to reinforce many of the concepts introduced in this course and realize its stated objectives.

De la lección

Improvising the Blues – Part 2

Lesson 7 explores modal categories and scalar patterns in improvisation, in addition to continued discussion on pentatonics. As in the previous lesson, live musicians demonstrate key concepts and principles presented in the lecture, with additional play-along tracks provided for the student to explore concepts on their own.

Introduction and Diatonic/Chromatic Modes (7:46)7:46

Modal Categories (10:06)10:07

Characteristic Triads and Practice Tips (13:13)13:13

Minor Blues - “Sea Blues” Improvisation (7:50)7:51

Play-Along Session - “Mr. PC” Progression (3:06)3:06

Pentatonics – Introduction (7:09)7:10

Sus7 Blues Improvisation with Pentatonics (7:36)7:36

Play-Along Session – “Sus Blues” Progression (2:52)2:53

Scalar Patterns – Introduction (7:41)7:42

Scalar Patterns - “Top Set” Improvisation (7:39)7:39

Play-Along Session – “Isotope” Progression (2:42)2:43

Conclusion (0:47)0:48

Conoce a los instructores

Dariusz Terefenko
Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media
Eastman School of Music

I asked Daniel Sunshine to compose a contrafact based on a masterpiece by

John Coltrane and I'll ask you about the piece after you hear the performance.

On the screen you can see the lead

sheet of Daniel's composition.

[MUSIC]

Okay, so Daniel, tell us about your composition.

What was your thought process in composing the fine contrafact?

>> So first I wanted to think about, when you hear a lot of these minor blues,

like Mr. PC or Equinox, like those train minor blues.

It starts with like a motive,

and then in some cases he does the exact same thing over the four chord.

But in this case I wanted to try doing more of like and

AAB type approach, like what we were talking about before.

Where you have the motive in the first bar and

then in the fifth bar it's slightly changed rhythmically to

accentuate different parts of the beat over this bass line.

Now the bass line is written like a seven eighth notes for the bar.

So, it goes over the bar line.

And that repeats kind of like a ostinato, resetting every four bars.

So, in the first four bars the melody hits a lot of those bass line

points like beat four and, and then the second bar beat two and

beat four right on the beat, the melody's hitting with the bass.

But in the second four bars I wrote the melody to

play more around those beats instead of on them.

And then for the last four bars I try something completely different.

Once again, hitting on and off the beats.

So it's on the beats in the first four bars,

playing around the beats in the second four bars.

And then the last four bars on and off the beats mixing it up with the motive.

>> Excellent, excellent.

So now what we can try, before we talked about different modes and

the use of correctivistic triads associated with these modes.

Now, I would like to ask Luke to demonstrate the use

of these modes based on Daniel's composition.

All right, so guys, it's all yours.

[MUSIC]

Excellent guys, excellent guys, great job.

So Luke tell us about your approach to improvisation.

>> Okay, so for a minor blues like this, especially in the style

of Cold Train, that's kind of what the sound I had in mind He really

exemplifies the use of the natural six on some of these minor chords so

that suggests like a dorian sound.

So I really was trying to play clearly the dorian mode,

also some of the upper structure triads.

Another one that sounds really good on a minor chord

like C-minor would be flat seven, so like a B-flat minor.

A B-flat major.

Arpeggio, rather.

And then over these dominant sections that connect the two modal sounds,

I was trying to use more of an altered sound.

Which, then again, is more upper structure triads and arpeggios.

But yeah, I was really trying to key in to the Dorian, and

the flat seven major upper structure triads.

That was extremely well demonstrated the way you kind of used your fine technical

abilities between instrument and with each chorus, create more tension.

Kind of going up after the 13,

it's characteristic beauty mark of the Dorian mode.

And also to alleviate the tension that you guys generated,

you used that beautiful flat seven upper structured triad, going down.

Which kind of reminded me of the second chorus of Miles Davis and kind of so on,

so what.

When he uses precisely the same idea with the upper structured triads.

For eight bars you use that exactly.

So, very finite.

You can hear that it's very idiomatic to do these like fast

runs on the saxophone and basically capitalize on the use of

different notes and spell them exactly as they appear.

[MUSIC]

Or.

[MUSIC]

As arpeggiation and really accentuating these characteristic notes in your solo.

And another thing that puts particularly effective is the mixture of your blues

elements in your playing, especially in the final four bars of your Solo.

You know, the chords themselves already have these like blownouts.

So, in addition to a clear model statement, you also able to

integrate the roots of those, which are, you know, fortunately, in a blues scale.

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