Lesson in Blues

Last night, the "Lonely Woman" group performed at the Festival Jazz Ensemble Concert. The performance went smoothly.

Perhaps more memorable about the concert was the time spent backstage, though. During the first half of the concert, Dennis gave me a blues lesson. Some of this information we'd gone over in class, but it helped to hear it again one-on-one and to for me to play on my violin the different concepts Dennis talked about as he taught them to me.

Here's what we covered:

*The Blues Scale: the notes in a natural minor scale; 1, 3, 4, flat 5, 5, 7, 1
#Exercise: I played the scale a couple times in different keys.

*Twelve-Bar Blues: Dennis explained that the dominant 7 chord is a "stable" chord in the blues, unlike in classical music. Twelve-bar blues is:
- 4 bars of tonic (I) d7 chords
- 2 bars of subdominant (IV) d7; then 2 bars of tonic (I) d7
- 1 bar dominant (V) d7, 1 bar subdominant (IV) d7, 2 bars tonic (I) d7
Then it all repeats again.
I-IV-V(-IV-I).
#Exercise: At first, I thought we were supposed to change keys whenever the chords changed, but then Dennis outlined D7,D7,D7,D7/G7,G7,D7,D7/A7,G7,D7,D7 on guitar while I soloed in D over it, and I listened to the way the different harmonies changed the way my D major sounded and heard how it works. Simple stuff, but actually I couldn't help smiling when I heard it as I was playing - it sounds neat.

*Rhythm: Dennis went over straight eighths versus swung eighths. Straight eighths are as normal even eighth notes, whereas swung eighths are like playing on beats 1 and 3 in a triplet. There's also the "in between" eighth which is somewhere between a straight eighth and a swung eighth.
#Exercise: We repeated the twelve-bar blues exercise, this time with me playing a D blues scale in either straight eighths, swung eighths, or in-between eighths. Then Dennis had me do this again, but put an accent on the off-beat, not the downbeat.

*Notes outside the blues scale/modes: I asked Dennis what notes we can use outside of the blues scale. Well, any notes really, but he talked about using two different modes in particular - Dorian and Mixolydian.
-Dorian: like a major scale, with flat 3 and 7
-Mixolydian: like a major scale, with flat 3
Dennis pointed out that the flat 3 contrasts the non-flat 3 in the d7 chords, and that musicians often use a mix of both flat and non-flat 3, sometimes sliding from one to the other. Also, the difference between major and minor blues is in whether the dominant 7 chord has a major or minor third in it.
#Exercise: I played the Dorian and Mixolydian scales a few times, then repeated the twelve-bar-blues exercise, this time trying to incorporte the flat and non-flat 3 in my improvisation.

Big thanks to Dennis. He is impossibly nice.