Sus7 Blues Improvisation with Pentatonics (7:36)

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From the course by University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

312 ratings

University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

312 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

I'd like to welcome Luke, Tyrone, and Daniel again.

I asked Tyrone this time to compose a contrafact based on the Sus Blues.

So let's play the tune and then we'll talk about Tyrone's compositional process.

>> One, two, one, two, three.

[MUSIC]

>> Okay, Tyrone, so tell us about it.

>> So, big characteristic of coltrane in a lot of the song's he writes,

especially the Blues's are, they have like an o[en feel to them usually.

And writing the Suss Blues I really try to capture that and

just using a lot of B flat's over the F seven Sus chords.

Just using a lot of fours in here.

And so if you look the phrase structure.

In measure one, we have the E flat and the C that's going down,

and then if you look at measure five, we have the E flat and the F going up.

So it kind of just, in the blues form we

have something like a motive that's used right at the beginning and

then it's just a little bit different once you get to the second area.

Also if you take a look at the ends of the phrases, they end in a little kind of

wacky places which kind of make it feel a little open as well.

So if you take a look at measure four, the end of the phrase is really on beat two.

And then if you look at measure eight the end of the phrase is on beat four.

So I just tried to make sure this blues felt really, really open.

And if you look at the very last measure we have an A flat in the end.

And it leads right back to the G in the beginning of the blues.

So, try to make sure everything kind of fit together.

>> One of the challenging aspects of Sus, this particular one,

which is based on Mr. Day by Coltrane, is the last four bars.

Instead of going to the dominant harmony you go to the subdominant and

go down to flat three.

And going to one.

So that's kind of uncharacteristic of the typical blues progression.

So, you can see at the melodic content,

Tyrone is using upper structure triads to really get inside of these Sus harmonies.

On B flat, upper structure on flat seven.

And on A flat on flat seven?

So that's a really nice touch.

Before we talked about the use of pentatonic's in improvisation and

Suss Blues.

So and we have Luke with us.

So I asked Luke to demonstrate the use of pentatonic's,

different pentatonic's using Tyrone Shuz.

So now we're going to demonstrate the use of

pentatonics using Tyrone's, Mr. T.

>> One, two, and three.

[MUSIC]

>> Okay, so tell us, Luke, about your approach to improvisation.

>> So on this one,

once again this is a very clear Coltrane influence in the blues.

Like you said, Mr. Day.

And so one thing that Coltrane kind of,

he improvised in different blues' differently.

So, on this one, I think that he would use more of a penatonic based approach,

especially emphasizing on the sus sound.

So, instead of playing a pentatonic that included the third in it he would include

something that would emphasize the fourth and the flat seven scale degrees.

And saxophone this fits really well,

because you can play multiple pentatonic shapes in one range of the horn,

and just change the few notes that change from pentatonic to pentatonic.

And that works really well in developing motives and

playing across changes and not necessarily restricting one pentatonic per change.

Kind of extending one panatomic harmony throughout a few different chords.

And then a few times I kind of played a pentatonic that was very clearly

dissonant and I was doing that purposefully in the last few bars,

the last four bars the turnaround section to kind

of contrast with the rest of the pentatonics that I used before.

That's something Coltrane would also do very frequently.

>> Yeah, and before we talk about the nature of pentatonic scales that we

discussed about their neutral character in terms of tonality.

So it opens different possibilities for

the pianos or for the bass player to kind of go outside of the changes, and

make a nice contrast between diatonic, pentatonics and

some chromatic chords that we can experiment with in the rhythm section.

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