Blues vocabulary and phrasing
Build a personal blues vocabulary from two-bar call-and-response phrases, learn original licks for the I7, IV7, V7 and the turnaround, and assemble them into a complete, well-paced chorus.
Why vocabulary
Scales tell you which notes are available; they do not tell you what to say. Every jazz musician has a stock of vocabulary: short phrases, learned from records and from other players, that they know will work over a given chord and that they can vary on the spot. The blues is where this vocabulary is most concentrated, because the phrases are short, the harmony is predictable and the same chords come round every twelve bars.
This lesson gives you a handful of original phrases for each part of the form, explains the notes in each one, and shows how to join them into a chorus that breathes. The phrases are written in position VIII (frets 6–10), a step up from the position you used in the previous lesson, so that by the end of the module you own two positions of the F blues. As before, dominant chords are written with their 13th and minor chords with their 9th, so that the available tensions count as chord tones; only the blue notes of F are exempt from the check, and the text tells you where they are.
Call and response: the two-bar phrase
The blues is built on call and response: a phrase (the call) and an answer to it (the response). Vocal blues does it with words; instrumental blues does it with rhythm and contour. The unit is two bars: a phrase of roughly a bar and a half, then a breath. Three two-bar units fill a four-bar phrase with room to spare, and three four-bar phrases make a chorus. If you play nothing but two-bar phrases with a breath between them, your solos will already sound more organised than most.
The example below is a call in bars 1–2 and a response in bars 3–4. The call rises and ends on the root; the response starts later in the bar, uses a similar rhythm, and ends on the root an octave lower. The flat 3rd in bar 1 passes up into the 3rd; the flat 3rd in bar 3 passes up into the 3rd again. That symmetry, same rhythm with a different ending, is the simplest form of musical conversation.
alphaTex source
\tempo 100
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\ts 4 4
:8 8.2{ch "F13"} 9.2 10.2 8.1 :4 10.1 :8 8.1 10.2 | :4 10.3 r r r | :8 r 8.3 10.3 8.3 :4 7.4 :8 6.4 7.4 | :2 8.5 :4 r r |Most beginners start every phrase on beat 1 and run it to the end of the bar. Start on the "and of 1", on beat 2, or on the "and of 4" of the previous bar, and finish before the bar is over. The space you leave is where the rhythm section (and the listener) breathes, and it makes your next entrance an event.
Licks for the I chord
A lick is a phrase that works and that you have practised enough to play without thinking. Here are two for F7, each two bars long. Lick A starts on the "and of 1" with an arpeggio figure (3rd, 5th, back to the 3rd), passes through the 9th and the flat 3rd into the 3rd again, and lands on the 7th before resolving to the root; it is pure Mixolydian plus one blue note. Lick B is the blues side: a triplet on the 7th and root, the flat 3rd sliding into the 3rd, then a descending line through the 13th and 9th that stops on the flat 5th and resolves it to the 5th at the last moment.
alphaTex source
\tempo 110
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\ts 4 4
:8 r 10.2{ch "F13"} 8.1 10.2 8.2 9.2 10.2 8.3 | :4 10.3 :8 8.3 7.4 :2 8.5 | :8 8.3{tu 3 ch "F13"} 10.3{tu 3} 8.3{tu 3} :4 7.4 :8 6.4 7.4 :4 8.1 | :8 10.1 8.1 10.2 8.2 :4 9.4 10.4 |How to practise a lick so that it becomes yours:
- Play it as written until it is clean at the marked tempo, with the metronome on 2 and 4.
- Move its starting point: begin it on beat 2, then on the "and of 4" of the previous bar. The notes stay; the rhythm shifts.
- Change the ending: keep the first bar and invent three different second bars.
- Change the key: play it over Bb7 (bar 5) by moving the shape up five frets, and over C7 by moving it up seven. This is the single most important step, because the same lick on the IV and V chords gives you vocabulary for the whole form.
A lick for the IV chord and the diminished bar
Bars 5–7 are the harmonic centre of the blues: the IV chord, the diminished chord, and the return home. The phrase below handles all three. On Bb7 it runs up the chord (root, 9th, 3rd) and down through the 7th, 13th and 5th, which is Bb Mixolydian material. On Bdim7 it is nothing but the arpeggio, because on a diminished chord the arpeggio is the sound; the last note of the bar is the root of the diminished chord, which rises a half step to C, the 5th of F7, on the downbeat of bar 7. The F7 bar answers with the 3rd approached from the flat 3rd and finishes on the root.
alphaTex source
\tempo 110
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\ts 4 4
:8 6.1{ch "Bb13"} 8.1 10.1 8.1 :4 9.2 :8 8.2 6.2 | 7.1{ch "Bdim7"} 9.2 6.2 7.3 :4 9.2 :8 r 7.1 | 8.1{ch "F13"} 10.2 9.2 10.2 :4 10.3 r |Bdim7 contains the 3rd and 7th of Bb7, so you can keep playing Bb ideas through bar 6 and only the bass will change. But the one note that is not in Bb7, the raised root B, is what the listener is waiting for. Play the arpeggio once, every chorus, and the diminished bar becomes a landmark instead of a blur.
Licks for the ii–V and the turnaround
Bars 9–12 contain the real cadence of the key (Gm7–C7) and the turnaround (F7–D7 | Gm7–C7). Jazz vocabulary for these bars is the same as for a ii–V–I in any standard: arpeggios of the ii chord, the 3rd and 13th of the V chord, and a flat 9th on any dominant that resolves to a minor chord. The four-bar phrase below does exactly that. On Gm9 it climbs the arpeggio to the 9th and falls back to the 5th. On C13 it moves through the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 13th. In bar 11 the F13 half is a descending cell ending on the root, and the D7b9 half starts on the flat 9th (Eb), the blue-sounding note that resolves down to D, the 5th of the Gm9 in bar 12. The last bar ends on the root of C7, ready to go up a 4th to F.
alphaTex source
\tempo 110
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\ts 4 4
:8 10.5{ch "Gm9"} 8.4 7.3 10.3 :4 10.2 :8 10.3 7.3 | 10.4{ch "C13"} 9.3 8.2 6.1 :4 10.2 :8 8.2 9.3 | 8.1{ch "F13"} 10.2 8.2 10.3 8.3{ch "D7b9"} 7.2 10.2 8.1 | 7.3{ch "Gm9"} 8.4 :4 10.2 :8 9.3{ch "C13"} 6.1 :4 8.1 |Building a chorus
A chorus is not twelve bars of licks. It is three four-bar phrases with a shape: a statement (bars 1–4), a development that uses the harmonic movement of bars 5–8, and a conclusion through the cadence and turnaround. Here is how to build one:
- Bars 1–4: a call and response. Keep the first phrase simple so that you have somewhere to go.
- Bars 5–8: raise the intensity slightly with the IV chord (it is the brightest moment of the form), mark the diminished chord, and let the iii–VI bar point towards the ii–V.
- Bars 9–12: play the changes. The ii–V and the turnaround are where "jazz" vocabulary belongs; a blues-scale line through bars 9–10 is fine once, but a chorus that ignores the cadence every time sounds like a rock solo.
- Across choruses: leave the first bar of a new chorus empty now and then. Nothing marks the form more clearly.
The chorus below is assembled from the phrases in this lesson, with one new bar (bar 8: an Am7 arpeggio and the D7 flat 9th) and the bar-4 Cm9 cell from the previous lesson, transposed into position VIII. Learn it, then replace one phrase at a time with your own.
alphaTex source
\tempo 120
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\ts 4 4
:8 8.2{ch "F13"} 9.2 10.2 8.1 :4 10.1 :8 8.1 10.2 | :4 10.3 r r r | :8 r 8.3 10.3 8.3 :4 7.4 :8 6.4 7.4 | 8.1{ch "Cm9"} 8.3 7.3 8.4 10.2{ch "F13"} 8.3 :4 10.3 | :8 6.1{ch "Bb13"} 8.1 10.1 8.1 :4 9.2 :8 8.2 6.2 | 7.1{ch "Bdim7"} 9.2 6.2 7.3 :4 9.2 :8 r 7.1 | 8.1{ch "F13"} 10.2 9.2 10.2 :4 10.3 r | :8 10.2{ch "Am7"} 8.1 9.3 8.2 7.2{ch "D7b9"} 10.2 :4 8.3 | :8 10.5{ch "Gm9"} 8.4 7.3 10.3 :4 10.2 :8 10.3 7.3 | 10.4{ch "C13"} 9.3 8.2 6.1 :4 10.2 :8 8.2 9.3 | 8.1{ch "F13"} 10.2 8.2 10.3 8.3{ch "D7b9"} 7.2 10.2 8.1 | 7.3{ch "Gm9"} 8.4 :4 10.2 :8 9.3{ch "C13"} 6.1 :4 8.1 |Listen to one chorus each of Charlie Parker on "Now's the Time", Wes Montgomery on "Fried Pie", Grant Green on "Blues in Maude's Flat" and Kenny Burrell on "Chitlins Con Carne", and count the phrases: where each starts in the bar, how long it lasts, how long the gap is. Write the phrase lengths down as bar numbers (for example "1.5–2.3, rest, 3.2–4.4"). You will find that the masters leave far more space than you expect, and that their phrases rarely start on beat 1.
Making the vocabulary yours
- Rhythm first. Take any lick in this lesson, keep its rhythm and change every note. Then keep the notes and change the rhythm. Either way you have a new lick that is related to one you know.
- Sing before you play. If you can sing the phrase, you can place it; if you can only finger it, it will come out as an exercise.
- One lick, twelve keys, one position. Each lick lives in a four-fret window, so transposing it is a matter of moving the whole hand. Do the I7 licks over Bb7 and C7 inside the F blues before you take them to other keys.
- Record a chorus, listen, cut. Most solos improve by removing a third of the notes.
- Week 1, daily 10 minutes: the call-and-response example and the two I7 licks at 100–110 bpm, then each lick moved to Bb7 (five frets up) and C7 (seven frets up). Metronome on 2 and 4.
- Week 1, daily 5 minutes: the bars 5–7 and bars 9–12 phrases, looped over a play-along in F, at 110 bpm.
- Week 2, daily 10 minutes: the complete chorus from memory at 120 bpm; then three choruses over the play-along alternating one written chorus with one improvised chorus that uses the same phrase lengths.
- Week 2, daily 5 minutes: transpose the complete chorus to Bb (everything up five frets, so position I for the I7 licks becomes position VI). Check the chords against the all-keys table in lesson 1.
- Goal: three choruses of blues in F at 132 bpm with two-bar phrasing, a marked diminished bar, a played ii–V and turnaround, and at least one bar of silence per chorus.