Pentatonics – Introduction (7:09)

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From the course by University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

306 ratings

University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

306 ratings

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.

From the lesson

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

Meet the Instructors

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

Now, we are going to discuss the use of pentatonics in improvisation.

To that end, we will use a Sus Blues in F.

As you might remember from lecture two, pentatonics are five note scales,

and they're diverse intervallic structure,

renders them particularly effective in improvisation.

On the screen, you can see two pentatonic collections on F.

One suspended, and one minor.

We will use these scales to improvise in the blues, Sus Blues.

So here is F suspended pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

And here is your minor pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

When you compare the two, you can see that there are lots of notes that

are held in common, in fact, one note different between these two collections.

The suspended has the [SOUND] G, and the minor pentatonic [SOUND] has

the A flat instead of, and all four notes are basically the same.

So, because of the very diverse intervallic content,

these and other pentatonic collections are very useful for practicing.

And you can practice these in the same way you would practice your skills,

skipping certain notes but instead of creating patterns,

[MUSIC]

You can create something far more interesting by skipping one note,

[MUSIC]

You can create far more interesting melodic lines.

All right, in addition to these scales, suspended and minor,

you can experiment with these pentatonics by slightly modifying

their [INAUDIBLE] structure, and you can come up with different

pentatonic collections that you can use with the same chords.

So, on the screen,

you can see the suspended pentatonic along with two scalar variations.

Okay, so here's your suspended pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

And, here's one variation.

Instead of C,

[MUSIC]

And this is your second variation.

[MUSIC]

So these three scales share certain notes in common.

All of them has the fourth and the flat seven.

These notes are truly defined the suspended qualities.

But other notes are kind of this place and you can use them at your discretion.

As long as you have five notes within an octave,

you're creating a pentatonic collection.

And again, these variations are useful should you choose to arpeggiate,

or using different intervallic patterns while you improvise.

And the same thing goes for the minor pentatonic.

Here's your traditional minor pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

And here's one variation.

[MUSIC]

So in other words, you are replacing the fifth of that scale with

the upper diatonic neighbor to create a more pungent-sounding pentatonic

collection that you can use in addition to the regular minor pentatonic.

Okay, so here is our Sus Blues.

Remember?

[MUSIC]

F sus for four measures.

[SOUND] B flat sus.

[SOUND] F sus.

[SOUND] And the last four bars.

[SOUND] B flat sus.

[SOUND] A flat sus.

[SOUND] All right, so now, on the screen,

you can see the distribution of a specific pentatonic collections.

So with F sus.

[MUSIC]

B flat,

[MUSIC]

F sus,

[MUSIC]

B flat sus,

[MUSIC]

A flat sus,

[MUSIC]

Later on, Luke Norris is going to show us how to improvise with these scales but,

the thing that I already mentioned,

practicing these skills using different intervallic patterns or

different scalar configurations, skipping certain notes, and

trying to come up with a convinsive melody that uses only these five notes.

If you can create, improvise a convincing so.

Now, remember, we've also discussed different variance of these pentatonics.

So, instead of traditional pentatonics collection, [SOUND],

we can use different ones

[MUSIC].

So we can start on a Sus, then with B flat Sus chord,

we can use minor pentatonic,

[MUSIC]

Once we start improvising on a kind of suspended harmonies, and

suspended harmonies are kind of androgynous to begin with.

They are neither minor nor major.

So we can experiment with different pentatonics.

And since pentatonics are devoid of any strong tonal associations,

you can kind of mix and match.

Remember, when we discuss suspended pentatonics and minor pentatonics,

there's only one node different between the two.

And in fact the node flat three,

rend is the underlying harmony with that kind of blue note characteristics, right?

[MUSIC]

And the last four bars, B flat sus, and then A flat minor.

[MUSIC]

So again, to make a long story short,

you can substitute with Sus chords, you can use minor pentatonics and

suspended pentatonics with different variants.

And you can generate melodies based on these pentatonic collections.

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