New Workshop Series: Minor Blues
Published: Fri, 09/08/23
We'll start in September with Minor Blues Chord Substitutions. You'll learn how to use Freddie Green voicings to expand your chord vocabulary on the minor twelve-bar blues, then look at how to apply those ideas to an eight bar minor blues. Plus, we'll see how to adapt these classic swing voicings to more modern comping styles.
In October, we'll cover Minor Blues And Bebop. If you're tired of playing the same old pentatonic licks over the minor blues, but glaze over when jazz instructors start talking about "learning all the modes in all twelve keys," this class on soloing will show you a simple, hands-on way to "play the changes" on the minor blues without getting lost in the weeds. Building on the chord changes covered in Minor Blues Chord Substitutions, we'll look at the chord tones and scale shapes you need to start adding altered and diminished licks into your playing, why they work, and how to use them in your solos without compromising your blues sensibilities.
We'll pull everything together in November with Kenny Burrell Chords. Freddie Green voicings are perfect for seeing how chord substitutions work and for playing classic swing rhythm guitar, but moving those chord substitutions up to the top three or four strings opens up a whole new world of chord-melody licks, riff-style soloing and call-and-response chord hits. You can hear Kenny Burrell do this to great effect on albums like Midnight Blue and The Tender Gender, and in Kenny Burrell Chords, you'll learn how to use these essential voicings to create compelling solos of your own, tying together everything we've covered so far about comping, chord substitutions, altered and diminished licks, and blues phrasing.
Each workshop in this three-part series is designed to build on the previous one, and provide you with a clear, simple but thorough way to improve your playing on the minor blues. With each workshop, you'll get a detailed PDF of every exercise and example covered in the class, a downloadable jam track to practice to, and a year of unlimited, on-demand access to a full replay of the two-hour stream – so you don't even have to be at the live stream to get the full benefit of each class.
You do not have to have taken any previous Reliable Source workshops to take part in the upcoming series, and while taking all three workshops together is recommended, there will be options to sign up for each workshop individually as well. Below are the dates for all three workshops:
Sept. 23: Minor Blues Chord Substitutions
Oct. 21: Minor Blues & Bebop
Nov. 11: Kenny Burrell Chords
All workshops start at 10:30AM CDT and run for two hours.
Oct. 21: Minor Blues & Bebop
Nov. 11: Kenny Burrell Chords
All workshops start at 10:30AM CDT and run for two hours.
Registration opens this coming Tuesday, September 10th. Got questions? Drop me a line! I'll answer as many of them as I can in an upcoming newsletter.
More soon,
David