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I always thought of blues and ‘rhythm changes’ as two fundamental rites of passage, both need to be mastered.
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12-26-2018 09:47 AM
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Cool, but prove it!
Originally Posted by Toddep
Name a standard tune that Jazz Blues can't prepare you for.
Or are you thinking of Modal, or post Bop (shorter/tyner) type tunes? Modern non functional harmony based tunes?
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Agreed, but, hypothetically, does the Jazz Blues expert handle RC better than an RC expert handles Jazz Blues? Originally Posted by grahambop
Or is there little or no difference, regardless of one's approach? I mean, there are "bluesy" RC players, and then there are some decidedly "unbluesy" Jazz Blues players .... right?
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Interesting thread, following.
Isn't blues kind of easy access to learning tonic, subdominant and dominant functions (cadences) to begin with? At least that's how I'm seeing it with my study. I started with the bare bones changes, then explored different ways of navigating these core functions, kind of building up different ways to play the same core thing. With substitutions, I think I'm getting a lot of useful tools that can be applied to standards as well.
Others here will be much more informed than me though - I haven't enough standards under my belt to be considered a real player YET. Working towards it though, with blues as my foundation. Probably spent/spending too much time with blues though? Any advice would be appreciated if there's a better route to become a well rounded 'professional'.
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Rockers generally don't know a damned thing about playing an honest blues, precisely because they approach it as "one scale and some arpeggios". Originally Posted by Tal_175
Even a simple 12-bar blues is very susceptible to jazz approaches such as substitution and voice-leading (in fact, a I7-IV7-V7 has its voice-leading built-in). Once you start adding extended and altered chords, your rocker's pentatonic minor is going to sound pretty dumb by its lonesome.Last edited by Thumpalumpacus; 12-28-2018 at 12:17 PM.
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All I know is that I worked on jazz blues first (probably because it was more familiar to me, coming from a rock background), then I tackled RC later because I found RC harder. Especially the bridge, I really had to practise the whole ‘cycle of fifths’ stuff. Originally Posted by princeplanet
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"I try to keep it simple, bluesy, and melodic." I like that approach.
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
Cool, but prove it!
Name a standard tune that Jazz Blues can't prepare you for.
Or are you thinking of Modal, or post Bop (shorter/tyner) type tunes? Modern non functional harmony based tunes?
Any standard that is not a blues
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That can't be right. Jazz Blues contains more harmonic challenges than many Standards. You may be thinking of more basic Blues. Originally Posted by Toddep
Last edited by princeplanet; 12-26-2018 at 02:13 PM.
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Jazz is about playing tunes... granted, a jazz blues has a lot of harmonic twists and you can get a lot of language from studying it. But other tunes have some different chord connections and moods. If you just study and play a jazz blues I don’t see how that would prepare you for playing on a ballad like Body and Soul. The different tunes dictate the way you play. You won’t play the same shit over a Blues as you would play over Body and Soul. Originally Posted by princeplanet
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I agree. Originally Posted by Tal_175
As discussed by Ted Greene in one of his videos, we're in the key of Bb7. In the blues, that dominant is the I not the V. The song resolves back to it. Traditional functional harmony conceives of the dominant chord as resolving to the tonic; in a blues, it can be the tonic. So that is, as you say, a different animal. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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RC can be handled easily by even a "basic" blues player. Originally Posted by grahambop
The A section is basically reduced to:
Bb | F7 | Bb | F7 |
Bb7 | Eb7 | Bb | F7 |
Bb - Bb major blues
F7 - Bb major or minor blues
Eb7 - Bb minor blues
The bridge is just cycling, which is a breeze for the complex Jazz Blues player.
Upon giving my own question some thought, Im thinking that if you're adept at basic functional harmony, then you can handle any kind of Dominant to Tonic movement (including it's usual subs) in both Major and Minor tonalities. Most tunes, blues or otherwise are mainly just Dom to Tonic movements in various key areas. What makes each tune unique might only be an idiosyncratic progression or two involving an unusual appearance of a chord (II7, IV7, bVII7, iv, etc ).
Of course, you still have to memorise the form of each tune (although some 32 bar forms can be easier than Jazz Blues' 12 bars), but if you're "making the changes" then a complex Jazz Blues should keep you on your toes as much as most standards, despite the short form.
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Dunno, I look at Parker and see common language between those kinds of standards and his blueses... Originally Posted by Toddep
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Again, the I7 can easily use language you may be using as though it were a V7. The context makes you feel it differently (as a kind of tonic), even though you may be playing as though it were a V7. It's all about voice leading to the next chord, after all... Anyway, I like to lean on the I6 sound often, even against the 17. THere's so many ways around those 12 bars, good thing too, you need a lot of variations for such a short form! Originally Posted by Cunamara
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One thing I think that’s great about jazz blues is that you can relate common jazz chord movements to the 3 chord functions.
Since the blues is familiar to most guitarists it’s a great point of familiarity which you don’t get so much with early to mid century popular songs that the average guitar player has never played.
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Christmas songs are good too lol
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This point could be widened - you don’t play the same shit on Sonny Moon that you do on Tenor Madness. Originally Posted by Toddep
The blues tunes are tunes too....
Body and Soul is a very bluesy standard wouldn’t you agree? Compared with maybe Darn That Dream. There plenty of references to the blues in the melody.
I think people get hung up on the form of the blues.
But blues is also a mood.
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I can't hold water to a truly educated musician (typical piano lessons for me when I was a kid for 5 years or so - a few guitar lessons later and a whole lot of books along the way, but I have been playing guitar for well over four decades now) so I always go back to "call and response" as the most basic blues idiom. Originally Posted by christianm77
The call and response in blues has very focused moods, IMHO. Could be happy, sad, whiney, relieved, jealous, sexy, etc., and a combination of two, but probably not three. If three, probably not four. Blues has a fence around it so to speak. When I think of jazz blues I think of some of the standards that have been mentioned, but the call and response is much more complex. Although I can't think of an example at the moment, I would think that you could do a jazz blues that searches for the calls and responses and outlines them without actually incorporating any resolved calls and responses. In that case the mood of the song may leave the listener wondering. That doesn't mean that it would be a bad thing. It may mean that the effects of the song last longer than the visceral emotions of what a straight blues may last. Not near as literal as a straight 8 or 12 bar blues.
I guess if you want to bottom line it: Blues would be instant gratification and jazz blues would be delayed satisfaction. Does any of this make sense, or am I full of it?
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Harold Arlen put some blues in many (most?) of his standards: "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", "Stormy Monday," "I Got A Right To Sing The Blues", "Get Happy." I think of "bluesy" as a mood more than as a form. (Though if at a jam someone says "let's do some blues," I expect it to be a 12-bar romp unless otherwise indicated.) Originally Posted by christianm77
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Are you saying this based on experience playing with blues players, or are you just hypothesizing? My experience is that the median level sort of player who frequents blues jams and can get around pretty well on I IV V Chicago blues kind of stuff can't play changes. Even calling a I VI II V jazz blues form at a jam is asking for trouble. Originally Posted by princeplanet
More pro-level blues players who've maybe played some jump blues, or a little jazz, or have backed singers who do a variety of material, sure. But RC or any other standard with your basic SRV wannabe sort of player is usually a trainwreck, at least in my experience.
John
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I think blues is mostly a mood. The form is pretty damned pliable ... it got turned into both jazz and rock'n'roll with little difficulty. And even the OG blues guys had fun with 8-, 9-, 12-, 13-, and 16-bar blues, played with minors (which really opens up the market on substitutions, it seems to me), and even a guy like BB gets jazzy at turns the way he goes between major and minor, navigating that mood change. Originally Posted by christianm77
Mood, on the other hand ... a lot of people think of blues as sad or commiserating, but it's also about my sweet little angel, or getting ready to cut someone, or headin' on down the road. There are so many different moods to the blues, but in the end for me it's the umami-flavor of music, that perfect balance between savory and sweet, happy and sad, angry and regretful.
I started out playing rock, and only got into the blues chasing down the influences of influences. But in that process, I got to hear guys like T-Bone and Kenny Burrell and Grant Green, who each in their own way to my ears really bridged the gap of blues and jazz, so that my rock-tuned ears delving into jazz had a hook they could hold onto. I wanted to learn jazz because I got into Steely Dan ... but my first hooks into jazz came from listening to jazzy blues and bluesy jazz, and hearing that I saw a door that could pass from one world to the next.
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Love this.
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Ironically,Sonny moon for two head based strictly on minor pentatonic scale throughout the changes Originally Posted by christianm77
Well blues scale to be more precise. But of course Sonny Rollins goes well beyond the pentatonic scale in his solo.
Last edited by Tal_175; 12-26-2018 at 10:47 PM.
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If we could learn rhythm changes by playing blues we wouldn't need rhythm changes :-)
Try these two. The first Hubbard one has no blues sounds in it at all. It may as well be straight-ahead jazz. The second one is full of blues sounds but you'd never learn to play a standard by playing like that.
The premise of this question is flawed. So the basic answer is: false.
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Well, I have been saying "Jazz" Blues with the hope that most of us take that to mean something that's way closer to Blues for Alice than it is to Chicago Blues. An SRV wannabe will try to "bluebone" their way through a simple 2-5-1 ! Originally Posted by John A.
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