Getting the Blues Together

Q: Been trying to learn a lot more of the Stevie Ray Vaughan blues style. Kind of plateaued. What would you recommend I do to be able to improvise like SRV and all of the Blues greats??

A: First of all, let me start with what we all do at first and how eventually we have to outgrow it. We generally start off by playing the minor pentatonic scale over the whole thing. I think this is OK when we start but you realize that this method won't work too well the first time you have to play the Blues for anything longer than ten minutes. I have to usually play two or three sets of the Blues on my Blues gig and let me tell you, your audience starts to get this glazed over look after a couple songs if you just keep regurgitating the same tired pentatonic scale licks. A lot of guitarists will tell you that there isn't much to the Blues and that all you have to do is play the pentatonic scale but these guys generally can't hold an audience for ten or fifteen minutes. These are some important points:

1. Vocabulary: You have to learn the licks from the greats. And you have to categorize them by where they work. For example, over the "I" chord, the "IV" chord, the "V" chord and the turnaround. When I listen to Stevie, I hear Albert King more than anything else. I wouldn't suggest you only pick apart the licks from one person but from a wide selection of guitarists or you'll run the risk of sounding exactly like that one guitarist. People often say I sound a bit like Stevie but the truth is that I never copied him much. I sound a little like him because I was influenced by the same players as he was, namely Albert King and Jimi Hendrix. I like Albert King, Albert Collins, BB King and Robben Ford. They all phrase differently as well and all have different approaches to the way they improvise. 

2. Phrasing: Phrasing is basically where you play and don't play. By copying solos from top to bottom, you are not only learning vocabulary, you learn about phrasing and if you do it enough, you'll be able to do it naturally.

3. 3rds and 7ths: You'll find that a lot of the important licks are based around the 3rds and 7ths of the chords, this is especially true of the "I" and"IV" chords. Let's take a G blues for example. Play an F and B note (on the 2nd and 1st strings) simultaneously over the G7 chord. You are playing the 7th and 3rd of the chord. Now move these two notes down a half step to E and Bb over the C7 ("IV" chord). Now you've got the 3rds and 7th of this chord happening. You'll find this all over the place and it is a typical Blues trick.

4. Triplets: You have to make an effort to play triplets. This is especially true for the medium and fast tempos. For practice sake, see if you can play constant triplets without stopping. This isn't a great idea on a gig, but if you practice doing this, you can build up your stamina. 

5. Pay close attention to the turnarounds. Steve played through them a lot landing on the important chord tones but there are plenty of standard turnarounds that can get you through a lot.

6. This goes without saying but you have to copy as many solos as you can. You'll find that the best players, although play the minor pentatonic scale a lot are really paying close attention to chord tones, phrasing (And repeating themselves) and have a great sense of timing and rhythm.

Links: 

Blues Basics

Melodic or Harmonic Minor

Q: I'm enjoying your Infinite Guitar book very much lately but I'm wondering why you dedicate so much time to Melodic Minor and not so much to Harmonic Minor. Why is Melodic Minor more important?

A: Good question. There isn't anything wrong with Harmonic Minor so to speak but Melodic Minor has more applications. Only one mode of Harmonic Minor is exclusively used and that mode is the 5th one, sometimes named the Phrygian Dominant mode. As an example, E to E in the A Harmonic Minor scale: E-F-G#-A-B-C-D. You would play it over an E7 or E7b9 chord and more often than not, it would get used over a V chord in a minor progression. For example in a rock application: Amin-G-F-E, you would want to play A natural minor over the first three chords and A Harmonic Minor over the final E chord. In a Jazz application, you would play it over a iio-V7 in A minor, as in Bmin7b5-E7b9-Amin7 (over the last chord, you wouldn't generally play A harmonic minor but A natural minor or A dorian. You can use Harmonic Minor over a i chord (as in A Harmonic Minor over an Amin chord) but it sounds like you are playing Mexican or Middle Eastern music. I might do this if I need to play something blatantly stinky, like when a director asks me to play something that sounds like a snake charmer.

On to Melodic Minor (click on the links for more information)

Dorian b2: B-C-D-E-F#-G#-A (1-b2-b3-4-5-6-b7): This mode gets used over a 13b9sus4 chord or a b9sus4 chord. It's not a very common chord but has a great sound.

Lydian Augmented: C-D-E-F#-G#-A-B (1-2-3-#4-#5-6-7): This gets used over a Cmaj7#5 chord. You can play it like a E/C slash chord. 

Lydian Dominant: D-E-F#-G#-A-B-C (1-2-3-#4-5-6-b7): Play this over a D7, D9, D13 chord but especially over a D7#11 chord. You can mix this scale up with a Blues scale over a vamp for some interesting contrast.

Locrian #2: F#-G#-A-B-C-D-E (1-2-b3-4-b5-b6-b7): This is a much better choice over a min7b5 chord than locrian. 

Altered: G#-A-B-C-D-E-F# (1-b2-#2-3-b5-#5-b7): Perfect for any altered dominant chord, as in 7(#5,#9), 7(b5,b9), 7(#5,b9), 7(b5,#9)

Most common are the Lydian Dominant and Altered mode but the other modes can be used quite effectively as well. For example, over a minor iio-V in A minor, you could play a B locrian #2 mode (D Melodic Minor) over the Bmin7b5, and the E altered mode (F Melodic Minor) over the E7b9 chord. You could even get away with playing A Melodic Minor over the i chord if you do it right (this works because A Melodic Minor looks a lot like A dorian, actually a dorian scale with a major 7th).

Pentatonic Scales

Q: The way you use pentatonic scales fascinates me. Not only does it sound cool, it is easy since most of us already know the patterns. In your book and on your site lesson: superimposing pentatonic scales, you describe the guidelines perfectly well (as in "play a minor pentatonic scale on the 3rd, 6th and 7th of any major chord") but what is the theory behind this? How and why does it work?

A: Good question. I suppose you are at the point in your studies where you need to question these things. I did the same thing a long time ago. I learned about the concept of superimposing minor pentatonic scales years ago and by simply memorizing the rules I could apply the concept any time I saw fit. Let's review the basic rules:

For a major chord:

Play a minor pentatonic scale on the 3rd, 6th and/or 7th degree of the chord

Let's try it. Record yourself a long Cmaj7 or Cmaj9 vamp. What is the 3rd, 6th and 7th of this chord? The 3rd is E, the 6th is A and the 7th is B. If you can't understand this yet, this lesson is too much for you so you should go back and study theory starting with scales, chords and intervals. Go here for that lesson >>>

It doesn't matter what scale pattern you play as long as you play the proper pentatonic scales. E is the 3rd of the C chord so you can play an E minor pentatonic scale. Try it and you'll see. Be a little careful though because the usual lines you play might not work as well but in general all the notes are OK. 

Why does it work? Well, the best way to figure that out is by comparing the chord to the scale. Let's see, the scale looks like this:

E-G-A-B-D and compared to the chord, these notes are the 3-5-6-7-2 of the C major chord. These are all very consonant tones and match the chord with little rubbing or grinding. it actually looks like a C69 chord if you place all the notes on top of each other.

Next, let's look at the minor pentatonic scale from the 6th. The 6th of C is A so an A minor pentatonic scale is what we are looking for. The A minor pentatonic scale looks like this:

A-C-D-E-G and compared to the C chord: 6-1-2-3-5. All perfectly nice sounding notes over the C major chord. I bet someone out there figured this out already but what we have created is simply the C major pentatonic scale with here. Right? A minor pentatonic and C major pentatonic are the same scales.

Next up, the minor pentatonic scale on the 7th. The 7th of C is B so B minor pentatonic is what we're looking for: B-D-E-F#-A or 7-2-3-#4-6. Now this looks very lydian to me because of the #4 (or #11 if you prefer).

All three of these scales combined give you the C lydian scale. Check it out yourself. C lydian: C-D-E-F#-G-A-B or 1-2-3-#4-5-6-7. 

Now, go on, get to work. Over your Cmaj9 vamp, try all three of these scales. 

The pentatonic scales always intrigue me because by simply taking 2 notes away from the 7 note scale you get something that actually has more personality. Less is more sometimes.

The next thing I did is look for the minor pentatonic scale patterns inside the scale itself. I mean, if all three pentatonic scale combined look like the lydian scale, all three must be inside somewhere. Take a look:

C lydian

Look, here is an E minor pentatonic scale:

And an A minor pentatonic scale:

And finally a B minor pentatonic scale:

Can you see that they are all inside the lydian scale?


We used our ears to make sure these scales work right? Next we used our eyes by looking inside the lydian scale and finding the three minor pentatonic scales. 

Now we'll use our brain. You can see this one more way. Remembering that there is a major pentatonic scale for every minor pentatonic scale:

E minor = G major 
A minor = C major and 
B minor = D major. 

Now look at the diatonic chords in the key of G major (G major is the same as C lydian):

G - Amin - Bmin - C - D - Emin- F#dim


Are you getting my point here? The three diatonic minor and the three diatonic major chords = the same three minor and major pentatonic scales that work over our C chord.


I've basically examined the minor pentatonic scales that work over major family chords. If you want to investigate more, go to the original lesson >>>

Recording Sessions

Q: What is the best way to prepare for session work? How did you put your self in a position that you could go into the studio and put the perfect part to a song that you had never heard before? And do it in a few takes. What should I study and how should I prepare? 'The Empowered Musician' gave some good ideas. But how do you go from playing a rock session to playing a soul session and make them both sound convincing?

A: My take on recording:

1. Half the battle is your sound. Going from Rock to Soul or anything else for that matter has a lot to do with your guitar and amp. Listen to some of the best players and ask yourself how he is getting that sound. Is it a telecaster or a Les Paul? Which pickup is being used? Is it a Marshall, Fender or VOX?

2. Simple is usually better unless they say otherwise. You always play more than you think (at least I do) so simplifying isn't a bad thing. A lot of Soul for example is just a convincing chord on 2 and 4 and nothing more. Conviction and a good tone count for just about everything sometimes.

3. Sessions are mostly done at home these days. If you had emailed me ten years ago, I would have told you to get your reading chops together. But these days I would tell you to get your recording chops together. At the college I run here in Tokyo I've made protools a required course for all students. Reading is obviously important but when you record parts at home you have very little time restrictions. You have to send the client a dry wav file but I'll often mix the guitar wet against the track to show them how I imagine the part should be mixed. So I send the dry wav plus a mixed mp3 of the song. Of course the client will mix it how he likes but sometimes it helps to give them an image. The problem with recording at home is the utter lack of conversation and creative input. You don't get any chance to talk to the other musicians about how to come up with something fun and interesting anymore or how the part could be mixed with the engineer or producer.

4. Good working instruments. Things that you sort of take for granted will screw up your sessions. You really have to make sure that your intonation is right on and there isn't any blatant fret buzz. I used my old Strat on a session recently and realized that the guitar isn't perfectly in tune all over the place. On the song I was doing, I had to play arpeggios up and down the neck on the top strings and I found that a D chord down at the bottom was in tune but when I played the D chord in the middle of the neck, it wasn't really in tune. My Strat is old and I don't think they were very particular about intonation in those days. The guitar is great for a Blues or something like that but won't really cut it for a modern sounding track. This sort of goes back to answer #1 but picking the instrument is important.

5. Be prepared to change your approach. Sometimes you think a Strat is right and the producer wants a Les Paul sound. It's as simple as that. Be prepared to switch instruments. Sometimes you think busy is good and the producer wants something simple.

6. Know a lot of music. If you want to come up with good parts, learn a bunch of music. Buy yourself the best of Wilson Picket and learn the songs and you'll be able to come up with good Soul parts. Buy yourself a Mike Landau CD and listen to all the sounds he gets. It's all about experience.

Quick Question About The Blues...

Q: Hey Chris, I’ve been working through some of the exercises in your book (specifically harmonizing the Major scale) and wondered about the standard Blues progression. People will often say ‘Play a blues in G Major’  Now this isn’t a diatonic progression – G7 is the V chord from C Maj, C7 is the V chord from E Major and D7 is the V chord from G Major. So why would this be referred to as a Blues in G Major. Is it just that the Blues progression is a kind of special case, that sits outside the normal diatonic rules? A basic question I know, but the harmonizing exercises in your book have got me thinking about this sort of thing. 

A: Generally, at least in my circle of partners in crime, we say "Play a Blues in G" or "Play a minor Blues in G." Or even "Play a Jazz Blues in G."  But not so often a "Blues in G major" it isn't wrong of course but sort of unnecessary. I guess you might say "major" just to make sure the person you are talking to doesn't play a minor Blues, but I think most players wouldn't confuse a Blues with a minor Blues.

When you try to make theoretic sense of a Blues it doesn't usually work out to well. If you had a time machine and went back to Bach's time and explained (in German) in pure theoretical terms about this style called the Blues, he would probably think you a nut case. Of course we know from playing it and listening to it, it works out pretty well though, at least to our modern ears.

It is sort of diatonic and I say that because it is based on the I, IV and V chords of one key. The "sort of" is because we change the I and IV chords to dominant chords. If St. Peter wouldn't let me through the pearly gates unless I could explain why the I chord is dominant in the Blues, I suppose I could tell him that it sort of functions as a V/IV chord. Right? a C7 in the key of C is the V chord of the IV chord. C7 goes nicely to F, a secondary dominant chord.

The dominant IV chord can't really be explained but if I had to come up with some sort of explanation at gunpoint, and I'm not really sure this is right, but I would say that as we like to play a minor pentatonic scale over the progression, the minor 3rd in the scale, is the b7 in the dominant IV chord. Right? the Eb note in the C minor pentatonic scale is the b7th of an F7 chord. Maybe that has something to do with it, but I'm not sure. The dominant V chord doesn't need much explaining.

All in all, the truth is that slaves liked the way that the minor pentatonic scale sounded of the white man's I-IV-V progression. And the major triads eventually turned into dominant chords. Maybe because of the b3rd in the scale but that is just a guess on my part. 

More on the Blues here >>>


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THE INFINITE GUITAR COMPANION VOLUME 1

It took about a year and a half but its finally done. I've started publishing a companion series for THE INFINITE GUITAR. As IG was, for the most part, a big fat theory book for the guitar, I felt that a method book was important and I started with this one. Volume 1 is dedicated entirely to imrov based on the major scale, major scale modes, pentatonic scales and the diatonic arpeggios inherent of all the major scale patterns. There is 224 pages of exercises.


THE INFINITE GUITAR COMPANION VOLUME 1 >>>

Writing Music - Art or Science

Q: I'll Start off by saying that I'm really digging the Prospects album. Anyhow, lately I've been getting really interested in the art of composing music and writing songs. Is it necessary to have a repertoire of cover songs (for educational purposes?) to begin composing my own music? Did you have a vast repertoire of cover songs before you began composing, or did you start composing/writing songs out of the blue? Did any other composers that you know of do the same/different?  This question has been on my mind for a very long time, but I have no connections with the experience to give me a proper answer. Thanks in advance for any advice you might have. 

A: Thanks, glad you are digging my CD. Good question too. Now remember here, writing music is a personal experience and it is part art and science. And depending on who does this writing, the balance or ratio of art and science changes.

Art and Science - When I say art, I mean writing by pure musical instinct, for the lack of better words. When I say science, I'm mostly referring to music theory. As you might know, you can write music to some degree using strictly theory. Whether or not the music will be stimulating or not is a different story. Even people who don't technically know music theory sometimes use it and don't even know they are. Theory is sometimes learned through experience and if you learned every Beatles song by ear and sort of figured out how they write, without knowing it you would be learning about secondary dominant chords and borrowed chords. Even though they didn't technically know in theoretic terms what they were doing, they were using a very standard musical theory that they certainly used by experience. I use both aspects to some degree when writing and depending on the song, this ratio of art and science changes somewhat.

Templates - There is also something that I call templates. This kind of music, or at least the chord progression is pretty much pre-determined. Two typical examples would be the "Blues" and "Rhythm Changes." There are variations on both, like a Minor Blues, Eight Bar or Jazz Blues. Rhythm Changes also have a pre-determined set of changes and the variations on these changes include various substitutions. For the most part, composers might use the "template" progression as is, and compose a melody over the top. Anybody who plays the Blues, knows about this.

Learning From Others - Some people will tell you that you shouldn't learn from other people's compositions because you'll never get an original sound of your own. I say that is the the stupidest advice I have ever heard. Out of all the great writers that I know, they all, and I mean every one of them learned through learning other composers music first. Whether they conceptualized everything using theory or not is a different story but regardless, they internalized certain tricks of the trade. So my best advice for you is to learn as many songs as you can and try to figure out how they came up with their hooks.

Me Personally - Since you are listening to "Prospects" let's see if I can't give you some background on how I came up with some of the songs. The methods may surprise you to some extent. The opening song, "Prospects" was basically an exercise or at least an assignment by my rhythm guitar teacher in college. I won't get into the details but it is all based on theory. I added in a little musical sense and made it musical. I basically wanted to do something lydian and that was my motivation. Chart >>>

"When Love Greets You" - the second song isn't based on any sort of traditional theory but I was able to write it because I played so many Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock songs over the years. There isn't much functional diatonic harmony going on but I learned from his music how to use 9ths and 7ths as melody notes. It is really pure influence so if I never played Wayne's songs from the Real Book, I could have never written a song like this (not to say that I can write anything as well as Wayne Shorter). Chart >>>

"Extraordinaire" - The next song is what I previously called a "Template Song." It is mostly based on a minor blues. And I couldn't have possibly written this song without having played a million other minor blues, like "Equinox" or "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" before hand.

So you can see my experiences helped me write all the music. I personally don't believe you can learn to be a musician in a musical vacuum so I suggest you copy and analyze as many songs as possible.

More on composition here >>> and here >>>

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