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Do you think I'm arguing that one can play blues scales against anything? Your first example kinda makes my real point...
Originally Posted by ragman1
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12-26-2018 11:17 PM
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No, I just think you're arguing :-) Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Hehe... perhaps you're right Originally Posted by ragman1
This place needs advocacy, but the Devil's kind 
...
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Given the various chord types which can be considered part of jazz blues, I'd guess you could argue that you'd be prepared for most of the chord types in standards. And, you could certainly develop good time feel, and the all-important skill of being able to think of a line and play it instantly.
But, that doesn't mean you wouldn't improve by actually playing a lot of standards. So, you might be prepared, but you would also have a lot more work to do.
Blues won't be enough if you're on a gig and somebody calls Giant Steps at a brisk tempo. You might have an idea of how to play through each of the chords, but it takes some work to really excel on Coltrane changes. So What might cause you to run out of ideas after you'd played some dorian.
The bridge to Miss Jones is probably going to be tough for the blues-only player. You might have enough theory, but are you going to have those changes in your ears if you never worked on that kind of material?
So, unless it was a genius, I'd expect the blues guy not to sound so great on the harder jazz tunes.
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Well, you're right of course, it takes a lot of work to just apply what you know to a new tune especially if it has some curly harmonic twists and turns. I guess my question is more about whether or not you would need new or different vocabulary / devices / licks etc for standard tunes rather than pull from the same bag you'd use for Jazz Blues. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
For the tunes you mentioned I think you could use the same material, just put together in different ways, and of course always with the over-arching awareness of the "story telling".... If Bird played to So What I'm pretty sure he'd never run out of Dorian ideas!
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I have a feeling a lot of mediocre blues players haven’t worked out how to use the major blues scale though...
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I've been a blues player for more than four decades. I've made a living from it and I think I'm pretty good at it.
It's a damn shame that these days blues is generally thought of as the generic 12 bar shuffle thingy, SRV style playing or even what Joe Bonamassa is putting out with the tag "Blues" on it.
Where's the love and respect for the old masters?(Except an occasional mention of B.B.King).
I've played all kinds of blues, acoustic, electric, Chicago style, slide and whatnot - if the tune called for it I stuck to the basic minor pentatonics but we also did slow ones for example with more complex changes where I'd probably use all 12 notes at one time or another: Wasn't but a few years ago that I had to learn that I was using bebop vocabulary without even knowing it ...
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Amen brother... Blues is more than I-IV-V shuffle. It's songs, melodies and changes.
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after studying these sitcoms I would say I have all the tools I need for most jazz.
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Bb Minor pentatonic at it's best Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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I think this is right and in a way it is odd, because very early (acoustic) blues was much more complicated than later styles. More chords, more kinds of chords, and a more tune-based approach to soloing. Originally Posted by christianm77
Here's something Duke Robillard did recently, an homage to the acoustic blues that had a huge influence on him. I would rather hear this than 27 choruses of "Crossroads" or "Sweet Home Chicago" any day.
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I knew that Charlie Parker based a lot of his songs on "I've got rhythm", but I never heard of that progression referred to as Rhythm Changes. I like the idea and see the value of playing over this chord progression, however I never really liked the song! OK, I learn something every day and I'll spend more time with RC.
One of my favorite songs to play (that I consider Jazz/Blues) is Sugar by Stanley Turrentine.
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Originally Posted by joe2758
This one's much mo' better:
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You said a "basic blues" player would be able to play RC. I'm just asking whether that's supposition or observation. i was not asking what you meant by jazz blues (which was clear to me). Originally Posted by princeplanet
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 !
John
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would be 100x better with al singing! Originally Posted by TOMMO
This one's much mo' better:
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Yep, even though I was hoping that this thread would discuss Jazz Blues (as apart from Basic Blues - which is an entirely different beast), I did indeed make the point that just as you could play blues scales over a blues, you can indeed do the same against RC. This point was made to show that language between the two forms is interchangeable in both directions, i.e., you can play blues scales against both (which I'm not a fan of unless done very sparely), or you can play Bop lines against both forms where you (if you wish) stay close to the changes. Originally Posted by John A.
The earlier example of Hubbard playing Bop lines against the blues changes sounded great, including #7th notes against Dom chords! Parker, Stitt, Clifford, even Joe Pass - these guys often played lines against Blues that would make some basic Blues players not even realise they were listening to a Blues! So the contention is that the Bop vocab/language can indeed be the same stuff for standards and Jazz Blues. Further, a sprinkling of Blues scale derived lines can also work for both. We love how GB does it, and Wes too. I bet if you analysed their approach to Blues vs their approach to other "tunes", we will find the same pool of ideas.
In the end, maybe it doesn't matter what you specialise in to begin with (if indeed you do / did), because perhaps your bop lines are fine for your blues tunes and vice versa. But, something tells me I prefer players who were schooled in the blues first, whether straight blues, or straight into Jazz Blues. Like with Cannonball, or even Oscar Peterson, the blues "vibe" is never too far away, and they can dip in and out at will. Yeah, I think I like that.....
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It's where all the soul is, in my opinion.. With the right dose of moderation it hits me the hardest. Originally Posted by princeplanet
In the end, maybe it doesn't matter what you specialise in to begin with (if indeed you do / did), because perhaps your bop lines are fine for your blues tunes and vice versa. But, something tells me I prefer players who were schooled in the blues first, whether straight blues, or straight into Jazz Blues. Like with Cannonball, or even Oscar Peterson, the blues "vibe" is never too far away, and they can dip in and out at will. Yeah, I think I like that.....
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Late to the conversation, but I think you could certainly get a whole lot out of mastering a jazz blues--assuming you're actually "mastering" it (or at least trying to exhaust all the possibilities within it)
I do think it could be dangerous to tell a young player to just focus on this, as assuming the I's IV''s and V's show up in the same places in the form, you can really blur the changes, play stock blues licks, and still sound decent.
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I think two crucial things are stressed in jazz blues : rhythmic feel and phrasing. If you get that down, the rest is doable. Indeed, if you phrase well and have a good rhythmic feel, the simplest of lines not only work but they sound great.
And let us not forget that for many jazz greats for a few decades, there were fewer changes to handle. Indeed, some treated the whole A section of rhythm changes as a I chord with a splash of V thrown in. What made THOSE solos work was rhythmic feel and phrasing...
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I think St. Thomas is a tune that being a jazz blues player might not prepare me for. Yes , the major blues scale can work, but it's not enough in my experience, the melodic shaping is different. Or how about Time Remembered (all dorian and lydian), or Inner Urge, or My Favorite Things, Samba de Orpheus, or Nefertiti. Or most of Miles 1960's bands. I don't think my jazz blues Horace Silver, Kenny Burrell, Jimmy Smith skills are so useful there.
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... there's more to Jazz Blues than the major blues scale... Why do I get the feeling that some of you guys are still talking about Blues as opposed to Jazz Blues? I'm not talking about "Jazzy" Blues... Hmmm, seems there are several interpretations of just exactly what constitutes "Jazz Blues". Originally Posted by rintincop
For the avoidance of doubt as to what I think it means:
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Wow that train sound is great at 2:05 Originally Posted by Tal_175
Bb Minor pentatonic at it's best
How'd he do dat ?
Did Tbone use flats ? What guage ?
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I feel people are conflating language and form.
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I never knew there was a specific definition for blues jazz. I've heard some jazzers refer to some bebop as Blues. I just look at the difference between a Jazz artist playing Blues compared to a Blues artist playing it. It's more sophisticated, more chord changes etc.
Definitions of sub genres seem to vary depending on who's talking. For example, I've heard Ronnie Earl referred to as a jazz guitarist by a blues fan before. I also know an old school sax player that called Herbie Hancock's Jazz/Funk "Soul" music.
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My understanding is that princeplanet's use of 'jazz blues' was to describe the common 12 bar form in use in jazz circles. Originally Posted by bobby d
The thing is jazz blues might also refer to a genre - like Robben Ford, for instance. That's not really of interest to me so much. It's a spectrum. There's obviously a tonality to blues guitar quite different now from jazz, and it can be fun to hear that in a changes context - Robben, Scott H, Mike Stern etc... The jazz guitar thing in a blues context not quite so common lol.
I think for some people the idea that you can separate the blues form from the blues is a bit counterintuitive, but it can go a long way.
Also, some musicians do not make any changes when playing a blues, often because they always use blues vocabulary. Lester Young, for instance, always sounds bluesy! Charlie Parker, always that mix of blues and changes... Grant Green always has the blues in any tune, and so on.
But also the non bluesy blues is a thing too.... A good example might be Dance of the Infidels by Bud Powell. Wave is another one (Jobim) - it actually includes a blues lick in the melody, but is obviously is pretty far from the basic tonality of blues music.
Furthermore, having listened to a lot of Chicago and Delta blues when getting into guitar and music, it always struck me that so many of these tunes didn't follow the 12 bar form, often being vamp based, or having irregular forms.
So the idea of blues, the music, the feeling and the form, became pretty separate in my mind.
So the 12 bar blues... I kind of see that as a WC Handy formalisation and a bit of simplification. Of the 12 bar form kind of belonging as much to jazz and dance bands as authentic rural blues.
And go back in time to the early jazz repetoire, you'll find many tunes with the words 'blues' in the title - Limehouse Blues, Thishomingo Blues, Basin Street Blues - even to an extent things like Royal Garden Blues - which don't follow the 12 bar form at all, or extend it in various ways.
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