HOW TO IMPROVISE OVER THE BLUES PROGRESSION

[Music] what's up everybody my name is Scott paddock and today we are going to talk about how to improvise over the Blues progression last week I did a video on the blues progression talking about the chords how they went together how to form the chords how to bass how to play bass lines over the chords and the question I got asked the most after posting that video is thank you for teaching me the chords but how do i improvise over so today I am going to show you exactly how to approach improvise and blues progression I did two previous videos that kind of work with this also the first is how to improvise and that uses your g blue scale the coms would be five blue scale but for out there sax villiers it's the G blue scale and then we're gonna use that scale today and that improv today and I also did a video on how to improvise over chords and the chords that I used in that video are two of the chords that we're going to use to improvise today and our B flat blues also G blues on the alto saxophone so I'm basically going to show you how the information from those two videos works with this blues progression okay so before you dive into this you need to be able to play the blues progression bass line if you can't do that check out the video I did on the blues progression because this is kind of a the next the next step after that video so here is your B flat blues progression played in quarter notes it's going to be the G's blue G blues progression on alto sax and that would be the C blues progression along the tenor sax so here it is one two yeah [Music] so that is your starting point you need to be able to play the bass line in other words like the chord outlines for the Blues progression before you dive into how to improvise over the Blues progression so the first step is just playing the blues scale over the entire progression the blues scale will work and sound really good over the entire progression it's only one scale so after a while it's gonna sound a little monotonous but it is a great place to start so on the alto sax our blues scale is made up of the first flat third fourth sharp fourth fifth flat seventh and again first of the G Major scale so in the key of G that would be G b-flat C C sharp D F and G and it sounds like this [Music] now the beauty of the blue scale is even though it is considered a scale not a traditional scale but is considered a scale anyway it already sounds like an idea have you just played the blue scale [Music] it sounds kind of cool as opposed to the G mixolydian scale which is what the chord represents that doesn't sound cool on its own so we have to figure out how to make that sound cool but our first step and M providing over the Blues progression is playing the blues scale so this is what it would sound like so that was the first four bars of the blues progression playing your blues scale now obviously when you just hear me play the blues scale you don't hear the blues progression behind me so to really practice this you're gonna want some kind of backing track so there are three options the first is the one that I have all of my students start off with improv with and that is the Jamey Aebersold maiden voyage book I don't do too many Jamie are you bruh sold books anymore and now that my real pro is out but this is such a great book to start with because it gives you going with a good five or six standard Tunes that are pretty easy to play so if you get the Jamey Aebersold maiden voyage book then the backing track would be shuffle time which is D flat blues so that would give you the backing track that you need and you could solo over top of it if you don't want to do that you could get the app called a real pro which gives you a ton of songs if you download the free jazz packet you could improvise over a song like blue monk which is B flat blues even though it's a little different than what we're talking about here the changes are a little bit different you can still use most of what we're talking about over your third option is the budget option you can record yourself on your phone playing a chord outline to the B flat blues progression and play back play that back and solo over top of it so step one is just play your blue scale so I am going to play two measures of chord outline and then two measures of blues scale and keep training back and forth so you can hear how it works and I also recommend doing this when you're playing with a backing track is doing two measures of chord outlines and then two measures of blues scale that works really well so here's what it would sound like I want to ready [Music] so did you hear how that worked we did two bars of the Blues progression outline then we did two bars of the blue scale solo so your first option again is to play the blues scale the second option is playing chord outline solos before you jump on to this one I would definitely recommend knocking out your blue scale solo and making that sound and really making that sound really good and building a lot of confidence with that and then start doing your chord outline so though a chord outline solo is just using all of the notes in the chord only the notes in the chord and making a solo out of that so I'll do one that's pretty basic and then I'll do one that's a little bit more advanced so the first one is this gonna you're gonna really hear the chords but I'm gonna change the rhythm around a little bit and make something that's shorter some notes longer I'm gonna go above and below just the one octave so here it is the chord outlines solo so you're gonna follow each chord you only when you hit the g7 you're gonna play G B D F when you hit the c7 you're gonna play ceg b-flat and when you hit the d7 you're gonna play D F sharp a and C so when you do the cord outline so that you have to change with the chords when you do the blues scale you just play the blues scale over the whole thing but when you play the chord outline solo you have to change with the chords here it is one a to O do Eddy [Music] so with the chord outline solo that was the basic one you could really hear the chord outline and me just kind of like ad-lib edawn a little bit added a little bit to it changing the rhythms a little bit this time I'm gonna do a little bit more advanced version of it and it's gonna sound more like a solo and the more advanced version of it I still use only those same notes I just don't do it so that it sounds like a chord so much I'll jump around more and try to make it sound more like an idea here it is 102 oh ah too bad yeah [Music] so again all I was doing was using cord outlines I was using the notes in the cords I just switch them up I jumped over the octaves of the horn I tried to play them more in a pattern to come up with more rhythmic ideas as opposed to just playing a straight up chord outline step number three is using the scales and I always start off with the G mixolydian scale G mixolydian scale this means a G major scale with a flat seven so that fits your g7 chord so your scale would be g a b c d e f natural g so it sounds like this so the sewing with that is you just take the scale and you mix it up a little bit it should still sound like kind of a scale idea but you just kind of like our meandering or winding your way through the scale so instead of just going all the way up the scale you're gonna kind of go up and then down a little bit up little more down a bit up around jump to some core tones and down so to sound like this so that is your G mixolydian scale improv now I always have my students do two bars of G blues and then two bars of G mixolydian improv to start because every third and fourth measure of the phrase of your three four-bar phrases are all g7 so you can play your g7 blue scale then your for two measures your g7 mixolydian M prop for two measures then when you hit the c7 you do the g7 blue scale improv and then when you go back to the g7 you do the mixolydian then when you go to the d7 and the c7 you go back to the blues scale for two measures and then when you hit the g7 again you play the G mixolydian improv in other words you're doing two bars of blue scale improv followed by two bars of mixolydian and if you use your G mixolydian for the mixolydian it fits on all of your mixolydian improv it would sound like this take a listen one two fare yeah [Music] did you hear how I did two bars of blues and then two bars of mixolydian so if you're doing a backing track that is a great one to play two bars of Blues at two bars at mixolydian it'll help you follow along in the chords and they'll help you play in two-bar phrases and you'll get your improv sounding really really clean now obviously the next step would be to play your mixolydian scale over C over the four chord which would be c7 so that would be a C major scale with a b-flat so it b c d e f G a and B flat and also your d7 that would be d e f-sharp G a B C D so you are playing mixolydian scales over the whole thing so this is what that would sound like the first time I'm gonna do it I'm gonna do it fairly easy so you can hear everything change it's gonna sound really scale wise and the second version I do it'll sound like a syllable so here's the first way to approach plane everything with the mixolydian scales that fit the chords one two Oh [Music] so you can really hear those scales matching up with the chords really easily because I was doing pretty much scale wise motion with some little jumps there now this next version is gonna sound more like solo because I'm not gonna play such scale wise motion when I'm sailing so take a listen to this one one two so those are your three strategies for playing over the Blues progression first play your blues scale for the whole thing second play a chord outline solos third play mixolydian scale solos and then of course the last step would be to combine everything so do some blues scale some mixolydian some chord outline solos when I'm explaining this to my kids to my students I always tell them that the when you're doing the blues scale if you're painting your opinion with one color so say your opinion with the color blue once you add in the court outlines then you have another color so then you're planing with blue and red and then when you throw in the mixolydian scales then you're painting with blue red and yellow so you have all these different colors that you can bring out in your solos whereas if you're just playing blues scale you're stuck with that one color so here is all three of them combined into one solo one two one two [Music] and that's how you solo over a blues progression you break it down into really small steps you build confidence with each step don't move on to the next step until you're super confident and crushing the step before and then by the time you get to the third or fourth step you're really ready to put it all together then you close your eyes and you just go for it so now I'm gonna play two courses of course means one time through the whole form so I'm gonna go through the whole form two times playing a bass line on my saxophone so if you want to solo over this and you want to practice with this video just start it right where that weight right rate where I come in and then solo over top of it so here are two courses one A two I want to [Music] so as you notice I played more of a baseline than strict chord outlines I just did that so it sounded cooler cooler it'd be way more fun to solo ever thanks for taking the time to check this video out I hope that now you know how to solo over the booth progression and if you can I'd really appreciate it if you subscribed to my channel give me a thumbs up and share it with your friends if you have any questions hit me with the comment below thanks a lot [Music]

Channel: Scott Paddock

Views: 51,240

Rating: 4.9430342 out of 5

Keywords: how to improvise over chords, how to improvise over chord changes, how to improvise, blues progression, how to solo over the blues, how to improvise over the blues, blues solo, blues improv, improv over chords, how to take a solo over the blues, how to play a solo on sax, sax, saxophone, sax solo, sax technique exercises, sax techniques, alto sax techniques, chord changes, how chord changes work

Id: Oe81lN8ZqE0

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018