Playing blues changes.

octatonic

This could have gone in theory but probably more people will see it in technique.

I was chatting to a couple of guitarist friends over the weekend about 12 bar blues blues changes and they both professed to not really completely understand how to negotiate a typical blues progression in terms of targeting chord tones. They know the term (probably because they are friends of mine and I bang on about it all the time) and roughly know what it is about but in the heat of the moment it all falls apart and they end up in endless-noodle-land.

I wondered if people who are in the same situation would be interested in a comprehensive breakdown of several different approaches you can take with a 12 bar blues progression?

It would be pretty straight forward, aimed at intermediate players who already know the minor pentatonic but tend to end up noodling in that scale over the whole progression and wondering why it gets boring and things eventually sound not quite right.

The goal would be to get playing sympathetically through a progression so it sounds like you know what you are doing.
I'd be focussing on the last 4 bars of the pattern for the most part, which is when people tend to freak out or freeze up.
I'd also be focussing a lot on phrasing so it might include a bit of bespoke video content that I can quickly upload and people could do the same if they were feeling brave.

If you are already comfortable doing this then it probably isn't for you and of course everyone can comment but I want to keep it as much as possible aimed at getting people the next step along so maybe we don't talk about outside playing or advanced approaches.

Who is interested?
If you don't want to comment maybe hit Wisdom so I can see if this is something people actually want.

viz

Oooo go for it!!!

Neilybob

Yes please 

EricTheWeary

I’d certainly follow that. I do understand the basic concepts but tend to rely on stock phrases for the last four bars (well, even more so than for the preceding eight). 

monquixote

I think it would be a great idea.

It's something I'm comfortable with in a fairly basic way in that I visualise the chord voicing that would sit in the fretboard position I'm currently in and try and target notes that sit in the chord. This comes from having to do a bit of a combined rhythm and lead style in one guitar bands, but it's served me well with solos.

I think one thing that I'd like to see around targeting tones is what to do about 3rds especially where you see a lot of people hammering away in A minor pentatonic over an A7 chord with a very clashy minor 3rd.
I tend to always bend or slide the 3rd between minor and major as I think that's where some of the blues magic lives, but it's definitely something I see beginners struggle with.

Danny1969

monquixote said:

I think it would be a great idea.

It's something I'm comfortable with in a fairly basic way in that I visualise the chord voicing that would sit in the fretboard position I'm currently in and try and target notes that sit in the chord. This comes from having to do a bit of a combined rhythm and lead style in one guitar bands, but it's served me well with solos.

I think one thing that I'd like to see around targeting tones is what to do about 3rds especially where you see a lot of people hammering away in A minor pentatonic over an A7 chord with a very clashy minor 3rd.
I tend to always bend or slide the 3rd between minor and major as I think that's where some of the blues magic lives, but it's definitely something I see beginners struggle with.

I think covering this would be a good idea. 

 One thing I always say to students is if you don't know what chords you are solo'ing over and thus what notes they contain then you are seriously hindering your chances of playing tastefully over the changes. That thing you were forced to do, playing both lead and rhythm at once ... and probably snatches of riff and stabs of chords to ape a 2 guitar part is the best way of practicing solo'ing IMHO as it means you are always hearing how the solo sounds with the chords.  

The maj / minor and half sharp min 3rd is definitely where some of the best bluesy sounding action is. 

PeteC

great idea .. and maybe start with the typical rock blues 12 bar  I, IV , V stuff ,  and progress gently into jazz blues changes 

Benm39

Yup, I'd be up for this. All helps to get out of a noodling rut

Dave8

octatonic said:

If you don't want to comment maybe hit Wisdom so I can see if this is something people actually want.

Excellent plan for extra wisdom points

digitalkettle

Dave8 said:

octatonic said:

If you don't want to comment maybe hit Wisdom so I can see if this is something people actually want.

Excellent plan for extra wisdom points

Think of it as an up-front payment

stickyfiddle

Great idea. Not something I personally need but I know plenty who'd benefit and I'd be highly supportive in whatever way I can

rustneversleeps

Yes pleeeze.

euan

Its always worth hearing someone else's approach 

octatonic

monquixote said:

I think it would be a great idea.

It's something I'm comfortable with in a fairly basic way in that I visualise the chord voicing that would sit in the fretboard position I'm currently in and try and target notes that sit in the chord. This comes from having to do a bit of a combined rhythm and lead style in one guitar bands, but it's served me well with solos.

I think one thing that I'd like to see around targeting tones is what to do about 3rds especially where you see a lot of people hammering away in A minor pentatonic over an A7 chord with a very clashy minor 3rd.
I tend to always bend or slide the 3rd between minor and major as I think that's where some of the blues magic lives, but it's definitely something I see beginners struggle with.

Yes, the minor pentatonic over a dominant chord is an interesting place.
There area lot of different ways to approach it.

I'll put a progression up so people can see:

So say we were playing an Am blues: Am7, Dm7, E7.
At Bar 9 we go from an Am7 chord (A C E G) to E7 (E G# B D).

What I am not going to do here is just give people licks to learn because we want to be doing the 'teach a man to fish' approach.

In terms of how do you deal with the minor 3rd over a major chord this is where a few conceptual issues come into play.
Danny1969's point of 'if you don't know what chords you are solo'ing over and thus what notes they contain then you are seriously hindering your chances of playing tastefully over the changes' is bang on.

You have to know, at the very least, what the target notes of the chord are.
What I mean by 'target notes' is the 3rd and the 7th of each chord (as well as the root).
You should hopefully be able to place those notes on the fingerboard, if not the entire length then at least around the 4th to 8th frets sort of region.

The target notes of the above progression's chords are:

Am7: C and G
Dm7: F and C
E7: G# and D

Don't worry about the 5th for now. 5ths give a chord stability and whilst you could target the 5th of a chord you should focus on 3rds and 7ths.

An early exercise I give students about playing over the V chord on bar 8 is to bend up from F# to the G# (2nd string 7th fret 3rd finger) and then back to the F# and then down to the E (2nd string 5th fret, 1st finger), then slide the whole thing down 2 frets to play over the IV chord and play a similar line but instead of bending up a tone just bend up a semitone (from E to F)

I'll record a version of this a bit later and post it.
You can clearly hear the chord change outlined just playing single notes. 

Now do it again but this time instead of bending From F# to G# just bend up to G.
Technically you are playing a dissonant note- the G over the the E7 but that tension is a big part of playing blues and it can sound good, esp if you slightly overbend the G.

Bends are a great way to approach this issues because you can slightly overbend so that you are somewhere in between the G and the G#. Practicing that bend a number of different ways is good practice. I like to get students to overbend (a bit) so they know how far they can push it. This is an area of 'if it sounds good then it is good'.

When you bend how accurate you have to be to the note sort of depends on what the purpose of the bend is.
Is it a passing note (as in a note that is played on its way to something else) or is it a destination note?

BTW we call them 'target notes' because those notes are (almost) foolproof places to end a phrase or lick for the chord they are related to.

I like to get people to do the 'wrong thing' (if there is such a thing) as a contrast exercise.
So when playing over the V chord try ending your phrase on the 4th (A) rather than G#.
In Jazz this would be called an 'avoid note'.
It will have an unresolved sound to it and whilst there are times (and progressions) where it might be appropriate we should start by learning all the straight forward stuff first, that can be easily applied.

So whenever you change chord at this stage it is good to say to yourself 'IV chord, F or C' 'V chord: G# and D' and sort of talk yourself through the chord changes and try to land on one of those notes.

So as an exercise set your metronome to about 75% of the typical pace of a slow blues tune.
Say 60 bpm.
This will give you some thinking time and we can speed it up later.

Play through the first 4 bars of the progression playing a line based around the A pentatonic minor scale ending on the note A (I'll try to post a recording of one too).
(Notes: A C D E G A).

When you get to bar 5 play exactly the same thing but this time ending on the note D.
This is a very common approach to take and a good one for beginners because you only have to remember a single line with a slight modification.

You will have heard lots of blues tunes do this or something similar but if it is your first introduction to targeting a chord tone it might take you a little while to get something you like.
Here is what you do.

SING IT.

We are not trying to shred.
You want to come up with (improvise) a memorable melodic line and that means you should be able to sing it.
For now approach this from the position of 'if I can't sing it then I'm not using it'.

If this is too much then try a simpler approach which is to get yourself a blues backing track and just play the chord tones.
A little bit later there is an exercise that we can do where you move about the neck playing just chord tones of any progression. This is super helpful in filling in any fretboard gaps whilst keeping you thinking about not just noodling in a scale but actually shifting your thinking with each chord.

I've got a bit of time tomorrow where I can record some examples of what I've written above so it should make a bit more sense.

octatonic

Dave8 said:

octatonic said:

If you don't want to comment maybe hit Wisdom so I can see if this is something people actually want.

Excellent plan for extra wisdom points

There are far less time consuming ways to do that.

octatonic

In my longer post above what I am trying to illustrate is the mindset of playing changes more than anything.

If you have only ever noodled over a progression with the minor pentatonic you might find you are having to do a lot more thinking.
It will get easier.

In the early stages you may have to actively think about what the chord tones//target notes are for each chord.
Once you've been doing it for a while you will just know it- like you do the alphabet which allows you to read this text as complete sentences with meaning.

Y O U  D O N T  H A V E  TO  R E A D  E A C H  L E T T E R one by one.

You get me?

stickyfiddle

octatonic said:

Here is what you do.

SING IT.

We are not trying to shred.
You want to come up with (improvise) a memorable melodic line and that means you should be able to sing it.
For now approach this from the position of 'if I can't sing it then I'm not using it'.
 

Wis for all of it but double wis for this. It's the fundamental thing behind just about everything that is good

Cranky

I’m in.

Fwiw I can share one epiphany I had recently.  It’s very simple and probably only the beginning of what octotonic has to offer.  But I finally took the time to write out chord tones.  The 7th of the IV chord is the minor 3rd of the I chord.  So if I’m “playing the chords” aka soloing using chord tones, I like to hit that major-to-minor 3rd shift when the progression moves from I to IV.  That’s a semitone to emphasize.  Otherwise I noodle in I major pentatonic during the I and V chords and I minor pentatonic during the IV chord.

axisus

As someone who built their house on an island in endless-noodle-land I would say I'm interested. I will see what I can make of your long post when I get a minute.

octatonic

axisus said:

As someone who built their house on an island in endless-noodle-land I would say I'm interested. I will see what I can make of your long post when I get a minute.

I hope you get something out of it.
If anything is not clear then just ask and I can go over it.

thomasw88

I suggest learning the major blues scale as well as the minor blues scale.

If playing a Major Blues -  The major/minor blues scale works over the 1 chord,  the minor scale works better over the 4 chord and over the 5 depending on how your feeling either works!