Stuart Smith
Traditional/Rock approach to blues
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Traditional/Rock approach to bluesA traditional approach to blues, which is often used in rock, is to combine the traditional blues chord progression shown above with melodies based on the pentatonic scale.3 The pentatonic scale could be thought of as a major scale minus the fourth and seventh degrees: 
However, this view of the pentatonic scale is somewhat misleading. Because of the absence of half-steps in this scale (and the resulting absence of the tritone between the fourth and seventh scale degrees), it is impossible to establish a Tonic by the usual harmonic or melodic means (e.g., the VÏ-I cadence). Thus, unlike the major and minor scales, the pentatonic scale does not have an unambiguous Tonic. Also because of the absence of half steps, it is impossible to create a strong dissonance with any combination of tones from the pentatonic scale—the notes all sound good together. This has been discovered by countless generations of children “improvising” on the black keys of the family piano (which form a pentatonic scale), and it is also one of the cornerstones of the Orff-Kodaly method of music instruction. The special characteristics of the pentatonic scale make it an excellent vehicle for improvisation, especially for beginners. There simply are no “wrong” notes. For purposes of the blues, the appropriate pentatonic scale pattern to use is 1^ Ó3^ 4^ 5^ Ó7^ Thus, for example, the scale notated above (C D E G A) would be used for blues in A (i.e., this scale begins on the “blue” third, C). As an experiment with this approach to the blues, try the following at the piano: with your left hand play the traditional blues chords in EÓ, and with your right hand play arbitrary black notes or perhaps try to improvise a simple melody. The following is an example of the kind of results that can be obtained with a little practice. Notice that the exact same pentatonic phrase is used over each 4-bar unit of the blues progression even though the harmony of each unit is different. The use of the pentatonic scales guarantees that, from the standpoint of blues usage, there will be no harmony/melody clashes. 
Exercises Write your own blues melody over the chord changes of a tune selected from the list in the A jazz approach to the blues section above. Write a bass line and piano/guitar part for the tune selected for exercise 1. Play the original tune and your melody with your bass and piano/guitar accompaniment. Write a blues melody based on a two-measure riff using a blues scale, and then write bass and piano/guitar parts for it using the “traditional” blues chord progression. Play the entire composition. Write a blues melody consisting of three identical four-bar phrases. Write bass and piano/guitar parts to accompany the melody. Play the entire composition Download 1.17 Mb. Share with your friends:
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