When I say "Blue Note Blues," I'm basically talking about music made from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, in a style that's typically referred to as "hard bop." 

Hard bop encompassed a lot of musical developments, but was widely held to be a kind of "back to basics" movement. Musicians who'd come of age emulating Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie began making a conscious effort to moderate bebop's breakneck tempos, streamline its tricky chord progressions, and introduce more "downhome" grooves like shuffles and Black church rhythms into the music.

Hard bop had its origins in the first recordings by Horace Silver and Art Blakey for Blue Note, the label which ultimately issued a long run of albums by both musicians. And Blakey and Silver's respective bands incubated dozens of artists who in turn recorded as leaders for Blue Note as well. 

Blue Note artists also made generous use of the twelve-bar blues form, making their records some of the most relateable jazz around. So "Blue Note Blues" seems as good a handle as any for the music I'll be covering in tomorrow's class.

Hard bop – or Blue Note Blues – really does represent a kind of stripped-down jazz approach to the blues. For example, you only need about five scales – maybe six – to play all of the licks and solos in tomorrow's workshop.

In fact, those six scales are all musicians like Grant Green, Hank Mobley and Wynton Kelly need to play compelling twelve-bar solos that are equal parts bebop daredevilry and funky blues riffing.

To do so on a Bb blues yourself, all you need are: 

1. Three Mixolydian scales – for the I, IV and V (Bb, Eb and F)
2. Two Dorian scales – for Fmin7 and Bbmin7
3. One G7 altered scale

The trick, of course, is knowing how to use those scales once you can find them on the fingerboard. And that's where learning from transcribed solos comes in.

When you can see, hear, and play through how people are really using the scales involved, that's when learning scales stops being some boring rote project and starts becoming something valuable and interesting.

So in tomorrow's workshop, we'll start by looking at how three important hard bop musicians streamline the jazz blues changes. Then, we'll check out the positions and fingerings for the six scales you'll need for the blues in Bb.

At that point, we'll go to the source, and play through four choruses of soloing by Grant Green, Hank Mobley and Wynton Kelly.

We'll break down each solo lick by lick, analyze how those licks work, and discuss how to make each one a part of your own soloing vocabulary.

By the end of the workshop, you'll understand not just what scales to use and where to play them, but how to actually start creating solos with that same hard bop combination of blues sensibility and jazz articulation.

You can still register for tomorrow's workshop at the link below:

Blue Note Blues – Register Now!

If you read through that list of six scales above and wondered "Why would I ever use an F Dorian scale on a Bb blues?" today's Youtube lesson is for you. In it, I break down a Grant Green lick from tomorrow's class where he uses Fminor7 to get from the I chord (Bb) to the IV chord (Eb).

You can find the lesson here:

Grant Green Plays ii–V To The IV Chord

More soon,

David