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The Blues
By Mike Hayes | December 19, 2010
The Blues is the very core of jazz music. The study of its elements is a very necessary requirement for the attainment of a mature jazz style.
Form
This is probably the simplest area to explain and can be summed up by saying the most popular blues form is twelve (12) measures long.
Other common variations of the blues form are 8, 16 and even 24 measure blues.
Harmony
In it’s purest form, the harmonic structure of the blues appears as one of the four variations as follows: (In the key of C).
Blues 1
C /// | C /// | C /// | C /// |
F /// | F /// | C /// | C /// |
G /// | G /// | C /// | C /// ||
Blues 2
C /// | C /// | C /// | C /// |
F /// | F /// | C /// | C /// |
G /// | F /// | C /// | C /// ||
Blues 3
C /// | F /// | C /// | C /// |
F /// | F /// | C /// | C /// |
G /// | G /// | C /// | C /// ||
Blues 4
C /// | F /// | C /// | C /// |
F /// | F /// | C /// | C /// |
G /// | F /// | C /// | C /// ||
There is an infinite amount of harmonic variations to these four basic chord sets; but for now we will stick to these simple patterns and get into some variations later.
Topics: Jazz Chord Progressions | No Comments »