Improvising Over A 12 Bar Blues
Dean Cutinelli here from the Colorado School of Music. Remember we are just a call away to start your private music lessons. We offer guitar lessons, piano lessons, drum lessons, Violin lessons, vocal lessons as well orchestral instruments.
This month I’ll be talking about all the different sounds that can be used to improvise in a traditional 12 bar blues. We will be using the key of E for this example. The traditional 12 bar blues uses all dominant 7th chords. The dominant 7th chord is comprised of the root a major 3rd a perfect 5th and a flatted 7th.(R-3rd-5th-b7th) Our chords for the 12 bar blues are E as your one chord the A is the four chord and the B is the five chord. All the chords in a traditional 12 bar blues are dominant 7th chords. There for our blues does not follow the traditional classic key. If we stayed true to the key of E our one chord would be major or major 7th as well as the four chord. Since we have dominant chord through out, our options to improvise over this progression are greatly increased. Your most classic sound you hear used over this progression are pentatonic scales. The first option or sound is your major pentatonic scale. For our key of E your notes for the pentatonic scale are E,F#,G#,B,C#. You should try playing this scale through out the 12 bar progression. You should take note of which chords you like this scale over best. For me I really like how this scale fits over the one chord. Again it will work over the whole 12 bar blues but with ring a little different over each chord. The second sound or color to try is the minor pentatonic scale. The note in the E minor scale are E,G,A,B,D. Again trying playing this over the whole 12 bar blues taking note of which chords you like this sound over best. In addition to your pentatonic scale you can add the flat 5 to the minor pentatonic scale. How you arrive at the flat 5 is to count up 5 from the E note in the minor pentatonic scale you will arrive at the note of B. Now flat that B note and now you have the flat 5 added to your minor pentatonic scale. The flat 5 has a very strong sound to it. Usually you pass through this note or tease the note. Try avoid starting out on the flat 5. When Jimi Hendrix started using this note some people would refer to it as the note of the devil. It does have a darker sound to it but by no means is it evil. The best of the best really use both the major and minor pentatonic scale with the flat 5. It’s up to you to decide which sound you want to use at which point in the progression. There is a common miss conception that you can also play the major scale from the key the 12 bar blues is in. This is not the case as the dominant 7th chord appears as the 5 chord in a major key. So you have to determine which key your dominant 7th chord comes from. For our example here the E7th chord is the five chord from the key A major. There for your A major scale is the correct chord to play over the E7th chord. You can try playing the A major scale over the whole 12 bar blues but you will find it does not sound that great over the 4 and 5 chord. Reason being is that each of these chords is a five chord from some key. If you start doing the math to figure out the key that the 4 and 5 chord come from. Then you could also try play that particular major scale over the proper chord as they pass by in the progression. This will have a bit of a confused sound to it. I recommend just trying the A major scale over the one chord and then switching back to a pentatonic scale. Again your most common and classic sound you here the greats use are both the major and minor pentatonic scales with the flat 5. Check out the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn and John Mayer to hear these sounds in action.
Feel free to come in to the Colorado School of Music and take a lesson from me. If some of these improv concerts seem over your head, I would be happy to start from the being to get you and your playing to a point that you understand and feel comfortable using these different concepts. We offer guitar lessons, piano lessons, drum lessons, violin lessons and vocal lessons as wells as orchestral instruments.
Thank you for reading!
Dean Cutinelli
