A good blues for chord-melody?

[Binyomin]

I find that Misty, All the Things You Are, Autumn Leaves, and other tunes work well for chord-melody, but not one of them is a blues. Can someone recommend a blues or two that would not be too difficult?

[PaulHintz]

Soft Winds. Nice little riff. The head isn't a blues, but that's what people blow on. It's in one of the old old fakebooks I have. Probably available all over.

[rkwestcoast]

Blue Monk works well

[mr. beaumont]

Blue monk is a great choice.

Other options:

Blues for alice works great...you can't harmonize every note, but it's good.

I like to do straight no chaser. It's a finger twister, but it's a great challenge.

I really like to do Grants Dimensions by Grant Green.

Temember, the blowing changes to Goodbye Pork Pie hat are a hip minor blues. The melody is fantastic for solo guitar.

[targuit]

'Round Midnight. Also, You Don't Know What Love Is, which I just recorded at home for rehearsal. This last song is surprisingly 'tricky' as regards the pulse. But I think it's interesting.

[vintagelove]

Not a "blues", but angel eyes has as much blues to my ears as anything I can imagine.

[mr. beaumont]

Doesn't it though?

We should do a thread on blues tunes that aren't blues forms.

[matt.guitarteacher]

"Alright, ok" lays out pretty well on the fretboard. Fun old tune my daughter always liked. I guess it's a blues... Cheesy but easy. "route 66" is easier still but cheesier still as well... If you're looking for something REALLY easy. :-)

Lots of blues moves in "mood indigo" and pretty straight forward CM even if not a straight blues form. "We'll be together again" is in a similar category IMO.

Blues for solo playing comes alive more when you can separate the chord and melody "voices" more. Too many conflicts in blues between melody and chords to voice everything simultaneously otherwise.

[vintagelove]

Another good one that's got some great blowing (picking?) changes is Daahoud.

[Longways to Go]

There's a blues in the Joe Pass Chord Melody book.

[alltunes]

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

[Binyomin]

Thanks to everyone who replied. Here is a link to a lead sheet for Soft Winds. http://musicweb.koncon.nl/images/cac...Soft_Winds.jpg

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Bluesette

... and Wave,

[John A.]

Turnaround
Back at the Chicken Shack
All Blues



John

[Nate Miller]

have you tried any of these?

Basin St Blues (Duke)

St Louis Blues (LA)

Blues for Bessie (Bud Powell)

Red Cross (Parker)


Some blues tunes are fun to play solo, but maybe not in chord melody. If you have a riff tune, play the riff with a couple harmonic notes thrown in, walk around or otherwise fill any long notes in the riff and then play all your chordy blues licks for a solo and come back and do the head again

that's the thing about a blues solo style...if you can just get some sort of setting on the head to get you to the solo, then you can play any chordy lick you know for blues until you run out of ammo and then you pay the head again and do an ending and go onto the next tune.

[mr. beaumont]

And the venerable (as in gag me) "Summertime."

[alltunes]

Ah yes Saint Louis Blues. For those who haven't watched Bill Frisell's version or worth a repeat listen or three:

[Cunamara]

And the venerable (as in gag me) "Summertime."

Well, the challenge there is to find a way to make it interesting. It lays really well on the guitar in A minor and is a great canvas for playing around with chord subs.

[Binyomin]

have you tried any of these?

Basin St Blues (Duke)

St Louis Blues (LA)

Blues for Bessie (Bud Powell)

Red Cross (Parker)


Some blues tunes are fun to play solo, but maybe not in chord melody. If you have a riff tune, play the riff with a couple harmonic notes thrown in, walk around or otherwise fill any long notes in the riff and then play all your chordy blues licks for a solo and come back and do the head again

that's the thing about a blues solo style...if you can just get some sort of setting on the head to get you to the solo, then you can play any chordy lick you know for blues until you run out of ammo and then you pay the head again and do an ending and go onto the next tune.

Thank you for the helpful response. A good teacher will sometimes deliberately put in something wrong just to see if the students are paying attention, so I'm going to take the bait: Red Cross is rhythm changes?

[PMB]

​Clifford Brown's Sandu came up on another thread. It's an ideal choice for solo guitar treatment (can't bring myself to write ch**** me****!). Here's Kurt Rosenwinkel playing over the tune. Unfortunately, most of the head is cut off:

[Nate Miller]

Thank you for the helpful response. A good teacher will sometimes deliberately put in something wrong just to see if the students are paying attention, so I'm going to take the bait: Red Cross is rhythm changes?

yes, its a riff tune based on rhythm changes.

well spotted


but since its based on a riff, for solo playing, its similar to those other tunes. I was playing this one a few weeks ago and thought it was a fun tune, so I threw it on the end of the list

[robguitar]

Not me, but Emily Remler's B Flat Blues (based on Wes Montgomery's D Natural blues)

[MarkRhodes]

My first choice was "Blue Monk". Most of the suggestions above sound good to me. (A few others I just don't know.)

It's always good to have an eight-bar blues in one's arsenal and "T'ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do" (-there are several spellings of this chestnut) is easy to sing and has a simple melody. You can get a nice groove going with it by yourself.

"Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out" is like it in that way.

"Trouble In Mind" is a third one. You don't have to be a singer to get those across, either.

[Stanford J17]

Bags Groove works quite good.

[fasstrack]

look into Jamal's night Mist Blues: Slow and loping, with lots of time for delicious chords. I think Peter Leitch recorded it, guitar-wise.

But get to Ahmad's original version. F^&ing killer...