You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How NOT to use the Blues Scale - #3

Episode Date: February 2, 2018

To play the blues, you gotta know what NOT to play. And then, maybe, just maybe you'll then be able to have the blues. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin. And I'm Adam Anus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast. Today we're going to talk about how not to use the blue scale. Now, the blue scale is one of the first scales that we learn when we start to get into jazz, I think. Was it the first scale for you, Adam? It absolutely was. I think it's the first scale that people identify with a jazzy, quote-unquote, sound.

That's right. So that's your kind of typical traditional blue scale, although... Don't hit them up with the secrets. Oh yeah. We'll get to that in another one. But anyway, there's other kinds of blues scales. But the concept of this in terms of, you know, how not to use the blues scale is very simple. If you're playing a blues, and this is a C blues, we're going to start, of course,

on the C blue scale. And then at a certain point we're going to go to the four chord, right? Now what do a lot of people do, Adam? They then will play the blue scale from the four chord, in this case the F blue scale. Ah, stop it. Ah, stop. It's hurt. It's hurt.

So we don't need to do that. Even when we go to the four chord, we're going to stay at that C blue scale. And then when we go back to the one, still there. Okay, so this is all C blue scale. Then we go to the five. What do you think, Adam? Should we leave now? No, sir.

No sir. There it is. Still C blue scale. You guys started to get this? hard to get this. Okay, so it's as much as how not to play the blue scale as how to play the blue scale. Absolutely, yeah. If you, when you change those key centers like that, especially because the blue scale is this pull of minor over major, I mean, it just takes me so far out of it. And honestly, it is a key indicator that you probably don't know what you do. Would you say it gives

you the blues when people leave and use too many blues scales on a blues? It's weird because it makes me want to play the blues and not play the blues at the same. That's meta right there. Yeah, once you start to hear the sound, and I mean, you know, take it from some real blues musicians, even beyond the jazz world for sure. If you go back in the history of the blues, and you hear, you know, I mean, we're in St. Louis, Missouri here,

which is kind of one of the cradles of the blues for many years, and it's just not played, like, that's amateur, right? It's not good. Now, I will say, though, there are other scales. You can play on the blues that make it sound good. You can do the dominant scale over the C, the C. Mixilladian, absolutely. And then when you change the F7 to the four chord, you can do the dominant scale in F.

That sounds great. That's right. And then this... Same thing in G. You can do the G Mixiladian over the G. And then using the one scale, when you get to the turnaround, if you don't want it to be a traditional 5-4 G7, Even if you go to like two kind of more of like a bebop sound, it still works to say on the C blues go.

It's a G7. Well, and notice what Peter just did there on that two chord. If you play that D again, he played a D, he didn't play a D minor seven. He played a D7 with that sharp nine in there. That F natural, yeah. But even on the, if I did a minor. Still sounds good. Still sounds better than...

Go up to A flat seven. to A flat step. Oh, now see, now we're cooking. Now I'm getting hungry. So this is one of those occasions where less is more. Absolutely. You're almost better off just learning that one blue scale and using that. And then adding in some of these other scales, as Adam was saying, the dominance and the Dorians and stuff.

But you know, you want to know... Of course, you want to learn that scale in all the keys, but for when you're playing, in those keys, not for when you're just going to that court. Absolutely. All right? So don't give everybody the blues by playing the wrong scale. Please. Give them the blues by playing the right blues scale.

That's it for today's episode of the You'll Hear It Podcast. For more information or to hear more of these podcasts, go to openstudionetwork.com slash podcast.