Joe Pass - Blue Side of Jazz

[Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] ah hello fellow guitarists um that was a course of the blues in the key of g and uh kind of a basic chord pattern which most of you already know and uh to uh start uh this tape i thought i'd play a little a couple courses of the blues actually it was three courses i think uh and um if you notice i played a little intro and in the course of my seminars and clinics for the lack of a better word clinics i feel like i'm a doctor or something i notice a lot of young guitarists that are very good players but don't seem to know some of the basic procedures in playing with a group or playing professionally or playing before an audience and one of the things is like learning to take knowing how to take an intro or taking an intro i took a little intro on that blues just to show you that you should know how to take an intro on a tune or have some and it's not necessarily a chordal intro it can be any kind it can be single lines it can be chords combination it can be that happened to be i think a six bar intro it can be a four bar generally it's a four bar or eight bar intro and uh also uh one of the other things that the players don't seem to do strong enough that i noticed is that ending a tune like kind of jamming the last eight bars or last four bars out knowing uh uh like [Music] you know of knowing how to end the tune it's it's quite important it kind of shows where you're at in your playing or career or whatever now that was a basic blues uh pattern in the key of g key g is a good key for the guitar and um while i'm at it a couple other things uh if you're a solo guitar player keep out of the key of e and a and d play a couple tunes or one or two tunes in those keys but do not play more than one or two tunes together in the key of e a and d because my theory is that you start getting the drone sound of the e and a and d [Music] and it doesn't matter what you play how beautiful the chords are and those chords can be very beautiful in the key of e and a and d because you have open strings but you'll put an audience to sleep and yourself too so always try to play if you play in the key of a play maybe the next piece in the key of c or e flat or b flat even though we all know that those are the prettiest sounding keys on the guitar that was just an aside had nothing to do with the blues um so anyway i'm going to talk today a little bit about uh chord patterns and blues and what i'm using the blues as a format and what to uh what to uh this sort of off the top of my head and what what to do with the chord blues chord pattern or what i would do with the blues chord pattern so basically i think we all know the three chords that go into the blues in the key of g i'll play maybe a 12 bars to show you uh the basic pattern so here we go [Music] so [Music] like that now when i have a one chord you can always use the five chord so [Music] you can always interchange the one chord with the five chord and that gives you some motion but so basically you have g c seventh which is a change that you necessarily don't have to use but i do and most of the uh let's say uh big city blues players have this kind of a pattern the c7 lots of times you go [Music] there's no change involved there except just a half step you can always move a half step into your chord you can always play half step above the the chord that you're playing if it's g you can always move a flat into g which by the way a flat is the flat 5 of g or the flat 5 of d rather and d 7th is the 5 of g so see the same voicing anyway so here's have to take that to a higher plateau i like that word plateau ah let's see so now uh we are we already did that we we added some uh color tones i call them added ninths and thirteen so now i'm gonna change the pattern a little bit uh same pattern g [Music] and then before i go to the c9 i will play d flat ninth which you can always play a half step into the chord which is also the flat nine of g [Music] now you're on your c9 so normally you would if you didn't know you would go so now in order to add some harmony to it and by the way when you add other harmonies other chord changes that enables you to play your lines also which extend the harmonies in your single note plane too [Music] now i'm going back to g so what i will do here is play f sharp f sharp seventh because f sharp seventh is a half half tone above g we have this normal [Music] now this f sharp 7 is f sharp 7 with the sixth or thirteenth in it and a flat nine but it works there because it's the root of g that's g root and if you look at my hand you can see that i'm playing the same three notes so i have a root here g so you see on the guitar a lot of playing is with forms and continuity kind of keeping everything in the same place and the same it's not as mysterious as it may appear if you don't associate it with a form or a pattern and as i said in my last tape everything i play from is a bar form bar so i'm always connected with the bar in this case f sharp seventh is bar here and it's the bar form of the e form of f sharp but that's another subject so we go back to the top again d flat going to c c7 d-flat is a kind of a d-flat 9th or a 13th has to be a dominant sound should has to be it cannot be a major 7th sound the c9 to f-sharp seventh with the sixth and the flat nine which is the root of g back now we're going to go to d7 which is the five of g [Music] now we once again we're going to c9 so we play a d flat because you can always move [Music] you can always do that sometimes you can change the root instead of having a d flat root you have a g root d flat is a flat five of g so they can work what you have is this these are the same dominant seventh third and seventh there it once again is [Music] so you go now we're back on c9 back on c9 now we can play a c sharp diminish before we go back to the uh g seventh c sharp diminish and if you put a root on the c sharp diminished you have once again your g flat seventh chord without the sixth so if you if you see these things all all are the same they're not mysterious or they're not any kind of uh uh deviation from what basic chord changes are i mean they're not like things where most players if you played them and who have played for a while would understand and know right away what you're doing so it's not like something you would have to explain to someone so these are just basic jazz chord patterns that have gone down through the since i guess uh i don't know when since louis armstrong or before they're in all kinds of music not only jazz and theoretically it's in every book you could if you were to examine this theoretically you would see that it's all correct so that is now an f sharp seventh or a c sharp diminished now we're back to g now we're going to a c seventh to a b seventh raised ninth to e seventh to an a minor now you notice that i keep a certain tone c9 i have a d here b seventh i have a d here i keep a pedal tone e7 i have a d here a minor i have a d here d7 i have a d here g that is a little uh variation on the blues so let me see what i want to do now is uh repeat the uh two uh 12 bar blues patterns for you to give you some idea of the little substitutions or chords that i've added so in order to place them in in perspective i will first play the basic pattern for you again so you know kind of where we are and where we're going so here i'll do a little bit brighter here's your five chord just to add a little color [Music] i'm adding some some more tones [Music] that's the 12 balls now i'm going to add kind of the more added substitute changes d flat g flat d7 raised nine d minor seventh g seventh c ninth half step higher the d flat diminish which is also g flat g7 c7 b7 e7 a minor seventh [Music] d7 e flat seventh d7 that's one beat g7 d7 so that is your basic pattern now i will repeat that pattern again and just play some other changes but basically the same chord but just some other voicings let's see [Music] it's now this voicing instead of playing a g i'm playing a g 13th d flat seven flat five instead of [Music] c nine d g g7 d7 raise 9 raise 5. now i'm going to add when you have i know many of you know about the 2 5 the 5 chord that is like d minor to g7 so i do that [Music] d flat ninth c ninth you can move i told you three steps diminish g7 c9 [Music] this is now b7 raise nine race fifth this is e7 raise nine now you can do it here too it's a minor e flat ninth d9 sus the word g7 sus now i'm gonna do a different turnaround instead of doing this turnaround which is a basically uh a five chord turnaround i will do a two five i think is it b minor e7 a minor d7 and then now you're back at the top so it's now you're back at the top now let's see how can i go to explain well one thing you must do when you play chords whether it's the blues or whatever the tune is as i said before you must keep some continuity in your voicing you don't play changes that are not connected in some way either with a pedal tone i have a pedal tone in that case d [Music] this is g this is d flat this is c nine this is b augmented b seventh b seven raise nine raise five a rating this is e minor you see i always have a pedal tone so either you keep a pedal tone in your chord or you keep a voice movement voice leading this would be b minor seventh this would be e7 [Music] a minor d7 g e7 [Music] e7 a7 [Music] d7 here g e7 a7 d7 so i have i have a voice leading i have a voice movement i have a melodic line moving on my chords and you have to have that because when you're playing changes which is a little bit i'm diverting a little bit from the subject of the blues but when you're playing chord changes for another soloist or whether it's a horn player or a piano player or another guitar player you're not just playing chord changes for this soloist so you don't think in terms of well i have the chords are a g f b as i just play these chords and wait for my turn to play which is a lot of guys do you're actually supposed to be enhancing his playing feeding him chords and you're actually supposed to be creating kind of a little melodic chordal movement yourself i mean it's not just i'll play these chords and wait until it's my solo that playing those chord changes uh is just as rewarding if you're listening to what you play as it is playing a solo with a million notes or three notes or whatever playing the changes so repeat that playing the changes is as rewarding if you're listening to what you're doing and moving voices around and trying to make good harmonies just as much as playing a solo i find for me so now in the blues i'll do the i'll do the the chord pattern that i give the second one which is a little bit more sophisticated than the basic ones those kind of bebop blues and and i'll play a couple of courses with chord changes voice leading and pedal tones so we start with g [Music] that's a voice leading [Music] do this is voice that's f sharp g d7 all pedal tone [Music] that's voice that's c b seven that's a little bit of voice leading a little bit of pedal tone and if you notice i'm using a lot of the same forms i call them grips a lot of the same grips i'm not playing anything that's like really strange kind of chord changes they're all bar forms and all basically chords that uh all guitar players learn and know this is everybody even if you play with a pick you can play this chord so that's one another basic blues pattern the substitutions are flat five d flat going into c and the substitutions on the one [Music] coming out of the the uh whatever bar that is i can't remember uh instead of staying on the g you go to c knife two beats b seventh two b's e seven through b a minor seven you're just doing a pattern here's a here's a here's another pattern it's almost the same pattern here's substitution that is okay that is my between a c b c seven b seven e seven a now a lot of times in the blues i substitute dominant sevens for minor sevens a lot of guys play that's the first two bars i play [Music] c9 substitution in place of this but this is a pattern too it's kind of a different kind of more lightweight i like mostly i think blues are based around real strong dominant seventh sounds now um so let me give you some examples of uh the same thing that's the d flat [Music] that's the diminisher f sharp seventh it's a diminished chord now and if you if you made it a ninth it would be f sharp seventh ninth but that doesn't sound good so that's why it's important important to make sure that when you play chords that there's common tones in the chords one you're coming from and one you're going to either you're making a moving voice or you're you have a pedal tone which is so those are four chords c seventh f sharp no there was a d flat which is common tone c seven but it has a common tone of b flat in it f sharp seventh which is a common tone which is f sharp seventh or f sharp diminished and then g ninth seven raised ninth which has a common tone so now i can get away with playing these but if i were to play them this way uh let's see [Music] those are the same chords but they don't they won't hang together they won't sound right they'll sound weird so [Music] okay here we go i keep digressing one two three four always count one two three four i don't know why [Music] that's c7 f sharp seven here comes some patterns b7 now there's c c b same form e same form a and i told you i substitute a dominant 7 for a minor 7. that normally in your books is a minor 7. b7 e7 which is a flat 5 and a minor but i substitute so if you notice i'm using the same form [Music] i just change the root so you can always move chord changes either chromatically or through a cycle [Music] that's a two five all dominants those are all dominants or you can move them chromatic [Music] now the key to to that's a very simple concept you can move chromatically or two five and we all know that in books that's written but the key to making it sound like you're doing something and it sounds good and it is the voicing the chord voicings that you use is the key if i repeat if you have a common tones in the chord or a moving line [Music] that's the same thing that's the same thing d7s listen that's just adding everything i place from a bar this bar here would be here it's this bar did the g form of [Music] it's the g form anyway that's getting off so let me see now where was okay another kind of a blues pattern is one that is uh goes like this two fives [Music] so it's g f sharp seventh to b seventh d minor to e a seventh d minor to g7 c major seventh c minor seventh b minor seventh to e seventh b flat minor to e flat seventh a minor seventh d7 g there's your turnaround is e a d now remember i'm talking mostly about dominant seventh chords so once once again except for the first chord of this tune of this pattern which is uh kind of another blues pattern which was uh back in the 50s and 60s of bebop days where they wrote f sharp 7 [Music] e minor a seven two five [Music] c major seventh then they went to c minor f seven b flat b flat minor e flat seven a flat major seventh did i do that a minor 7 d7 g7 e7 a minor d7 so it came out like this [Music] do [Music] i think i did two different ones i did this f sharp the b7 e minor to a7 d minor to g7 c major c minor seventh f f seventh b minor to e seven b flat minor to e flat seventh a minor to d seventh a minor to d7 to g to g that's the first one i did then i did something a little different i just which you can take a lot of liberties with these kind of chord patterns you know in this for instance g f sharp minor b7 e minor a7 d minor g7 c now here you can change c minor f7 now instead of going to b minor which is a two f uh uh two five pattern you can go c minor f7 to b flat major you stay there for a bar and then you go to b flat minor to e flat ninth for a bar then you go to a flat major seventh for a bar and then you're back on a minor seventh which was where you would be if you played the simple blues if you played the second set of changes that i told you about or if you played this third set of changes which i told you about you would be or this fourth set at this point in the chord pattern you would be on a minor d7 exactly where you would be on all the other changes so you see you have to sort of uh think a little bit and look a little bit at what you're playing and theoretically maybe you can figure it out but i'm sure you could i don't bother with theory because it confuses me so here goes [Music] this is the first set real simple [Music] turn around second set [Music] same chords c c minor f7 b flat major by the way you can go like this these are things on the guitar that you should know to do easy things never play anything that's hard if it's hard don't play it the object of playing the guitar and making music i think is is to be able to have motion and freedom and and play what you hear and what you feel and have some kind of flow and movement and not to show that wow i can do this real hard chord here and then once you do that you can't do anything else for for uh you know a minute or two because you're so busy trying to play that so it's easy to there are a lot of things on the guitar that are easy for instance a lot of playing comes from the form that you use and if you watch guitar players like any of them george benson uh pat metheny uh uh larry coryell george van impe uh arlen roth you've watched all these different kinds of guitar players you'll see that they're all using very much basically the same forms there are certain forms on the guitar that sound good that have a good uh intervals between them they have a good sound they have a good they're easy to play and you can get the most out of them and some of them are most of them are bar forms nines these kind of chords very few guys play so though there is a whole theory of playing [Music] the kind of voicing that is uh like saxophone voicing but most of the players used bar forms uh chords that are really basic and not hard to grip or play and they have a lot of freedom in their play so a lot of lines come out of those forms for instance if i have this chord this is a real basic ninth chord and i know that it can be called e7 like i know it can be called g7 i know it can be called something else i forgot there's four names to it and i know if you change the root it can be called d minor seventh d minor six e seventh raised to the flat nine uh g7 something else but anyway this here's a form it has a nice sound to it and you can play lines out of the form without not playing a scale or an arpeggio you're not playing an arpeggio because there's another way of gripping it by the way by the way don't play any chords with four fingers that you can play with two or one i mean why tie up i mean i like this but white in many cases you don't want to tie up all your fingers you can't do anything [Music] everything is under your finger [Music] see do here look look [Music] this happens to be an arpeggio but i don't think in terms of arpeggios a lot i play few of them because they fall under my fingers pretty good but i think in terms of scale lines [Music] so here [Music] see so you can get a lot out of the form that you're using a lot of the lines and a lot of the nice sounding lines by the way too without playing just arpeggios or playing a scale i know scales when you play from root to root they become scales and they're boring so uh in many uh k in a lot of cases i take a note like i don't know if i put this on the last tape or not but i take a note like that on the first or second string and i put a chord to that note in this case i'm putting c [Music] major seventh and i play from the root to that note and this sounds like not not a scale but a kind of a line then i take another chord with the same note on top this case f major seventh and then i play the scale from the root to the note i play the chord then i put another chord maybe a b flat seventh 13 on it same note i play from the root to the chord to the note [Music] and i'm having i'm getting now kind of a instead of scales if i play a raised knife e7 from the root [Music] you have that sound and you can go on [Music] forever uh all kinds of chords changing the note and you start to get kind of a line sounds of lines and more than than scales because scales i know end up sounding like scales and you don't know what to do with them so if you take from a root to an interval you get one of these things and you can make these chords majors dominance minors augmented major now you'll notice i start always on the root and i end always on the note that i picked the same tone that's the little digress digressing some of the things that i uh try to do in seminars to try to open up you should open up your ears a little bit so let me see we get back to the blues again blues in g and i will play [Music] now little variations on blues and g i'll try to slow them up a little bit [Music] nice [Music] that's half step above d7 [Music] all diminished chords can be used as dominant seventh chords and this in this case is a d7 flat nine which i earlier said don't use a flat nine in the blues but i do so i guess you can it's just you have to watch where you use it don't use it in the blues in conjunction with the raised nine so you don't want to have this sound in other words i don't want that it's not against the rules it's correct but it just doesn't sound right once again diminished works [Music] half tone higher half tone below [Music] c b e a dominant augmented d9 flat 5 of g turn around chromatic changes raised ninth c seventh raised nine flat knight here comes the run that is that is this that is the in between change in between g7 and c7 here it is on the top string [Music] here it is on the on the notes [Music] that's in between g seventh and c going to c here [Music] that's your five chord d7 that's this chord that is the five chord even though you may look at it and call it other things a flat but is the five chord if you had low d [Music] that's this chord [Music] turn around that's just your e calling now i'm playing a b flat root so it's but it's your e seventh turn around with a b flat root here is the e seventh d7 which is an a flat flat five of d [Music] keep hitting this button [Music] so that is this business everybody has that in the book [Music] but i play it this way g a minor now instead of going to b flat minor to b minor a lot of your players go like this diminish some players go i go i go back that's a flat suspension because i'm just doing this i'm doing so but i'm i'm voicing it [Music] that's the a minor so [Music] there's a voice there's another voice back so this voice is going this one is going [Music] and that is simply g a minor a flat g7 which is derived from this business which is kind of like some of the chord voicings that are used in early guitar books and okay let's start again the blues in g what's that it's nothing it's just g7 moving up to a flat [Music] c seventh moving up to d flat back to g7 then d flat moving up to d [Music] and y because the next change is c seventh [Music] so d flat now [Music] do [Music] now we're back at the beginning so you see by using little little forms common forms that are all guitar players know and using your ears and keeping some kind of a motif some musical idea you can play a lot of things that are very musical in a sense that they are and uh and not hard to do and the choice of making voicings and lines and that is infinite that can go on forever the better your ears are the more you begin to hear the little things you can do you don't have to do anything that's really difficult or really complicated so i will play a little piece for you on the blues and then get my plane [Music] so i like that [Music] do [Music] hi i'm woody mann and welcome to hot licks the blue side of jazz with joe pass this enhanced dvd was originally released in vhs format in 1992. the updated dvd edition includes a special feature section with slow motion exercises a selected discography joe's bio a suggested listening list and a chord dictionary section called the chord corner on the blue side of jazz past demystifies the art of jazz guitar in a practical non-theoretical way and shows you how melodic and chordal movement can make the art of playing rhythm as rewarding as playing solo he takes a blues in g and he builds on it and he deconstructs it so you can see all the mechanics he starts out with a very basic version of the progression then he adds color tones bass lines chord sequences pedal tones and chord substitutions he shows you everything from intros to accompaniment pointers bebop blues and endings joe does assume that you have at least a little bit of knowledge of chords and moves fairly quickly through some of the material so if you find it difficult to keep up with the changes try playing along with the slow motion section this allows you to loop all the exercises at half speed but the audio is restored to standard pitch and if you have any trouble with passes chord fingerings refer to the chord corner section here this lets you hear each chord while seeing a photograph of the position along with the chord diagram once you get the basic chord vocabulary down you should be ready to move along with pass as he embellishes the blues the blue side of jazz was made as a follow-up to joe pass's first hot licks title solo jazz guitar these two classic videos provide insight into the legendary musician who has played for some of the greatest band leaders of the 20th century leaders including dizzy gillespie count basie duke ellington ella fitzgerald oscar peterson and benny goodman for more on joe's playing try solo jazz guitar which covers pass's approach to chord melody and improvisation but meanwhile good luck with joe pass on the blue side of jazz

Channel: Younguitarplayer

Views: 479,408

Keywords: joe, pass, jazz, epiphone, lesson

Id: J5wOdikpRu8

Length: 54min 42sec (3282 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/pcbeard]

This is brilliant. How he uses pedal tones and voice leading just makes me so happy.

He also gives a lot of pointers about how to voice chords, emphasizing forms that give you more freedom (e.g. barres vs. widely spaced voicings). I think this lesson is worthy of much study. I wish I'd been able to take a lesson from this guy.

[u/[deleted]]

He’s my favorite jazz player.

[u/squirrelhunter59]

“I only play three chords: the 2, the 5, and the 1”. Later in the video, “you know when it goes 2-5? I just play 5”.

[u/Vynxe-Vainglory]

If you haven't listened to Joe Pass's catalogue, do so.

Absolutely ridiculous playing.

[u/Dear_Donkey_1881]

Whew. Thank you, who knows i might learn to comp properly.

[u/barebackgrizzlyrider]

Deep guitar knowledge Wizard.

[u/[deleted]]

I got the “always count 1234, and I don’t know why” part down pat. Lol