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Scot's Trio: Chico's Paradise
Chico's Paradise CD

Get Jazz Piano Stuff!

Scot Ranney's Jazz Piano Notebook, Volume 1

The roots of jazz and most other popular music grow deep within the blues tradition. When Africans were kidnapped and brought here to be sold as slaves, they were accompanied by a deep heritige where music and rhythm were fundamental to life in their society. A small, simplistic five note scale that didn't even fit into western tonality found itself as the seed of almost everything we hear.

1. The Blues Scale
2. Blues Chords
3. The Basic 12 Bar Blues Form
4. Simple Blues Song

The Blues Scale

The blues scale, shown here in the key of F, is a rather simple scale, encompassing all of five notes.

(midi link)

Some people might add what is often called the "blues" note, and it would be the B natural in the following example.

(midi link)

This "blues" note is our attempt at playing a note that doesn't exactly fit into western tonality. It lies somewhere between the 4th and the flat 5th. Africans didn't know about western tonality back in the 1700's, so they didn't consider that anything might have been wrong with their music (thank goodness!)

Blues Chords

Before we go on to a simple blues form, you need to know what to do when you see a chord symbol. When you play these examples, try to learn these chords in all the keys. It may take a while, but learning in all the keys is important. Keep in mind that the chord voicings are not set in stone- if you come up with something on your own that you like better, learn it in all the keys and then use it! For this lesson we will be keeping out examples in the key of F blues.

(midi link)

Play the root in your left hand as you play the chords. Now, as we look at the basic 12 bar blues form, you can play the chords above wherever they are called for in the following form.

(midi link)

Blues Song

Now let's play a simple blues song. The tune below shows the usage of the blues scale as well as another very important aspect of the blues - call and response. You will notice that for the first four bars, a melody is played. In the second four bars, the melody is repeated. In the last four bars, there is something else, a response. For more information on this style, you need to listen to some of the old blues guitar masters from the early part of the century. I will try to get some links in here soon for you to check them out.

One other thing that you will notice when you listen to the midi file is that the notes are "swung". That means that eighth notes are not played as literally as they are written. If you want to think about swing as being notated, the closest you can come is by writing triplets and then tying the first two (which is how I notated the music to get the illusion of "swing" for the midi file). But, it's better just to "feel" swing rather than trying to think logically about it. We'll get into swing more later on.

(midi link)

Try to learn this blues song, and then maybe learn it in C and Bb. Ultimately you'd want to know how to play it in all the keys. In the next lesson we'll explore more blues including a more jazzy sounding blues form with some different chord changes.