Blues Headlines
Richard Barrett is on a mission to make you a better blues player – with full audio examples and backing tracks
Dangerous Waters
Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs Choptank & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty ★★★☆☆ | 10 mins per example
PETER GREEN once compared improvising to crossing a river, with the ‘right’ notes being like stepping stones and the wrong ones… well, you’d need a change of clothes! Improvising over anything that departs from the ‘standard’ I-IV-V 12-bar progression requires us to keep an ear out for chords, which may mean venturing away from our safe ‘stepping stones’. For this solo, I’m referring to the C minor pentatonic/blues scale. To do this, we need to look at the content of the chords we’re playing over.
Take this in small sections at a time. The first section moves Cmajor/Abmaj7/Fadd9. through Though it may sound a drearily methodical task, check each chord for any common notes – these are the safest ‘stepping stones’ of all. In this case, G is the 5th in C, the Abmaj7 major 7th in the and the 9th in the Fadd9. Though G is already part of the C minor pentatonic scale, we can now also view it as a ‘safe’ note that fits really well with these chords.
When the chords repeat, the Fadd9 is replaced by Fmin9 and Dbmaj7 – surely very dangerous? However, if we check out the triads for these two chords, we find F as a common note. Also, there is still a G in Fmin9 (still the 9th!), and for Dbmaj7, Db the try the shape 1 major pentatonic at the 9th position, or the same C minor pentatonic I used to start the solo! The ‘B’ section of the backing track is based around A minor, so I shift my focus there during this section using the same principles just described.