Harpo Plays The Blues

Published: Tue, 03/26/24

First, no questions: just go and watch the first three minutes of this Slim Gaillard clip on Youtube. I want to say it's like if Harpo Marx had played the blues, but that's somehow doing a disservice to both men. Just check it out; you can thank me later for brightening your day:

Slim Gaillard

Now, the marketing boys tell me you should only talk about one thing at a time, but I really wanted to tell you about Slim Gaillard and I really want to tell you about today's Youtube lesson. My Chord Substitutions workshop is coming up this weekend, and today's lesson is meant to give you a bit of a preview of one of the ways we're going to take this sprawling and potentially vertiginous subject and cut it down to size.

As you may have gathered, we're more concerned around here with applying a bit of jazz sophistication to the blues than any kind of wholesale tackling of jazz per se, so today's lesson looks at how to take just three Freddie Green-style chord voicings and start applying them to the eight-bar blues "Trouble In Mind." At heart, "Trouble In Mind" is just a I-IV-V chord progression, so the ideas in today's lesson will work on plenty of other tunes as well, once you get them under your fingers. More on that later this week; for now, you can find today's Youtube lesson here:

Use These 3 Chords To Play Better Blues Progressions

The Chord Substitutions workshop will teach you essential voicings for all the important chords in a key, help you assemble them into a vocabulary of flexible, cool-sounding chord moves, and explain how to apply them to various blues standards. You can learn more and sign up at the link below:

Chord Substitutions Workshop

More soon,

David

david@davidhamburger.com

P.O. Box 302151
Austin TX 78703
USA

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