What Does one Play over Blues Chords?

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 09:04 AM

Well, that seems authoritative, but of what I don't know!!

Continuing thanks.

Peter T.

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: Nick
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 08:47 AM

I think I once read someone describe the essence of blues as the creation of tension via dissonance and it's subsequent resolution (I think in Guitar Techniques magazine). It further encouraged players to think in those terms rather than in scale/mode/shapes/boxes terms.

For example, whereabouts in any scale are the slight bends that are not a full semitone but are somewhere in the cracks between the notes?

I reckon if you play a solo to 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out' that you can play every note of a chromatic scale at some point in the course of a verse and no doubt someone could analyse which scales and modes you are moving between but I don't think most people I've watched or listened to consciously work like that.

There is a post on Guitartabs.cc site which suggests the following that may be along the lines you were after. It might mean something to you - it doesn't to me!

Major Type Chords

CHORD TYPE - APPROPRIATE SCALE - CHORD FUNCTION

Major Triad - Major (Ionian Mode) - Chord I
Major sus4 - Major (Ionian Mode) - Chord I
Major 6th - Major (Ionian Mode), Major Pentatonic - Chord I
Major 6/9 - Major (Ionian Mode), Major Pentatonic - Chord I
Major 7th - Major (Ionian Mode) - Chord I
Major 7th - Lydian Mode - Chord IV
Major 9th - Major (Ionian Mode) - Chord I
Major 9th - Lydian Mode Chord IV
Major 9add11 - Major (Ionian Mode) - Chord I
Major 9add13 - Major (Ionian Mode) - Chord I
Major 7b5 - Lydian Mode
Major 7#11 Lydian Mode

Minor Type Chords

CHORD TYPE - APPROPRIATE SCALE - CHORD FUNCTION

Minor Triad - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor 6th - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor 7th - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor 7sus4 - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor 69 - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor 9th - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor 11th - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor 13th - Dorian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord ii
Minor Triad - Phrygian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord iii
Minor 7th - Phrygian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord iii
Minor 7b13 - Phrygian Mode - Chord iii
Minor Triad - Aeolian Mode, Natural Minor, Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor - Chord I Minor Key
Minor Maj7th - Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor - Chord I Minor Key
Minor Triad - Aeolian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord VI
Minor 7th - Aeolian Mode, Blues, Minor Pentatonic - Chord VI
Minor 7b13 - Aeolian Mode - Chord vi
Minor 7b5 - Locrian Mode - Chord vii
Minor 7b5 - Mode 2 Harmonic Minor - Chord ii Minor Key
Minor 7b5 - Locrian #2
Minor 9b5 - Locrian #2

Dominant 7th Type Chords

CHORD TYPE - APPROPRIATE SCALE - CHORD FUNCTION

Dominant 7th - Mixolydian Mode, blues - Chord V
Dominant 7sus4 - Mixolydian Mode, Blues - Chord V
Dominant 7b5 - Whole Tone, Lydian b7
Dominant 7#5 - Whole Tone
Augmented 7th - Whole Tone,Augmented
Dominant 7#11 - Lydian b7
Dominant 7b9 - Diminished (1+2), Mode 5 Harmonic Minor
Dominant 7#9 - Diminished (1+2), Blues, Dorian Mode
Dominant 7#5#9 - Super Locrian
Dominant 7b5b9 - Super Locrian
Dominant 7#5b9 - Super Locrian
Dominant 7b5#9 - Super Locrian
9th - Mixolydian Mode, Blues
9b5 - Whole Tone, Lydian b7
11th - Mixolydian Mode, Blues
13th - Mixolydian Mode, Blues
13sus4 - Mixolydian Mode, Blues

Augmented Chords

CHORD TYPE - APPROPRIATE SCALE

Augmented - Lydian Augmented , Augmented, Mode3 Harmonic Minor
Augmented 7th - Whole Tone, Augmented
Major 7#5 - Lydian Augmented, Augmented, Mode3 Harmonic Minor

Diminished Chords

CHORD TYPE - APPROPRIATE SCALE

Diminished - Diminished (2+1), Mode 7 Harmonic Minor
Diminished 7th - Diminished (2+1), Mode 7 Harmonic Minor

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 08:25 AM

Thanks for the correction on Mixolydian mode. I didn't mean it was not technically correct. I suppose that I use it often, all unknowing, and that Bobert does as well. But I can't define it. Nor Bobert, I imagine.

A

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: GUEST,Ingrid Frances Stark
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 02:45 AM

Primitive Guest,

You sound like my first grade teacher who used to yell at me for reading ahead in the McGuffy Reader. It didn't stop me then, and it won't now.

Go be discouraging somewhere else.

I shall continue to encourage whomever I please.

Ingrid

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 01:41 AM

some people should simply be steered away from playing the blues..

upper midle class accademic musicians


have already done too much to destroy the soul, guts, and balls

of blue collar genuine folk and blues culture..


please dont encourage them

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: Cluin
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 01:37 AM

Mixolydian mode is a BIG part of the Blues. It's one of the more commonly used modes for improvisation solos and lots of blues tunes use that flatted 7th in the scale. B.B. King uses it most of the time.

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 01:37 AM

Thanks for the kind responses. I quite happily play by ear, and improvise, I am simply asking because I am curious about how what works works in theory.   A number of the guitar methods books talk about the use of modes over different chords, and about the uses of different pentatonic scales, but the discussions are scattered around. I was hoping someone might give me a reasonable summary.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: GUEST,Ingrid Frances Stark
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 01:20 AM

To the above guest who posted the first response:
If someone asks a question, they probably are trying to learn or understand something. It is not neccessary to be rude.

Peter, you might try thirds or fifths from the base note of the chord, and just keep adding other notes as you find the ones that sound right. It gets easier the more you just play notes and step out of their way.

Ingrid

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: Amos
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 10:19 PM

Peter:

There is no such thing as Mixylodian in the blues; they don't lend themselves to such frameworks, unless you try to force them.

Instead, try playing twelve-bar blues in E and throwing in blues riffs that including notes from the G scale, finding sequences that sound right to your ear. Or listen to blues as she is played and pluck out those sequences. When you move up to A, try sliding back to G for a beat before going back to A. Try sliding up to C before landing on B7, for example. Play with it to your heart's satisfaction. This patching together of riffs may not serve any academic standards, but it serves blues players from time immemorial because it gives them small segments they can call on in the flow of actually feeling the blues and getting them said.   

I would offer the thought that the blues is a primitive framework for exposing subtle feelings, not a subtle and sophisticated mechanism for formulating imitations of them.

Sorry if this is not helpful, but it is genuinely how I sees it, being a bear of little musicological brain.

A

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 09:57 PM

Well, you probably shouldn't play brown notes, unless you are in a shitty mood too...

Subject: RE: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: GUEST,primitive blues bodger
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 09:52 PM

if you need to ask..

then you may be too over-educated middle class to play it

its blues.. not friggin music college

just play it by feeling and ear

Subject: What Does one Play over Blues Chords?
From: Peter T.
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 09:20 PM

a musicology question:

If you are playing blues on a guitar or piano, the basic sequence is the familiar 12 bar blues, let us say, a I7 chord, a IV7 chord, and a V7 chord.   What scales can you play over them?

The standard idea is to (1) play a blues scale or the tonic (the I chord) minor pentatonic scale over all the chords; or (2) play a major pentatonic over the I chord, the minor pentatonic over the IV chord, and I guess back to the major pentatonic over the V chord. What other scales are possible in a normal way in the standard sequence, as opposed to sounding like way out jazz? One guess I would have is that you can play a Mixolydian scale over the V chord.

I am trying to sort this out in my mind just to tidy things up. Any assistance appreciated.

yours,

Peter T.