Make your Blues JAZZIER In 3 Easy Steps
Are you sick of the same old blues licks? Do you put yourself to sleep with your own guitar playing?
You’re not alone. Almost every rock and blues guitar player struggles or has struggled with blues lick dependency, but it isn’t too late.
There is still time to change!
And if you really want to, you too can stop playing the exact same 4 licks over every single song that you play - and bet some shiny new ideas that sound great.
What do you need to do?
Watch the video below, beginning-to-end, once.
... no seriously, until the end. I explain more than one trick in that video. So if you quit the video when you think you "got it" you are missing all the tricks but the first one...
Now, grab your guitar. And...
... watch the video again, but this time pause the video and try the tricks by yourself
You are but a few minutes away to make some gorgeous sounds with your guitar.
Want to know much more about modes than I can teach in one short video? Check out my Master of the Modes guitar course if you want to completely understand modes inside and out.
Video Transcription
Hello Internet, so nice to see you. You are a blues player, or you can play over a blues, you can improvise a blues, in this case this video is for you. And let's say that you want to introduce more jazz or more fusion into your playing.
You want to be able to play some strange notes that somehow sound right. You want to be able to play outside and create all those interesting sounds that jazz players and fusion players can create on their instrument.
Well, a student asked me exactly that. What I'm gonna show you in a minute is my answer that I gave him and we are gonna go through it step by step. As you're gonna see, the students start and he can already play a good blues.
And then you're gonna see how one element at a time, we add all those fusion elements and then by the end, I'm gonna show you the student improvising and it's gonna sound jazz fusion, okay? You can do exactly the same, just follow us step by step.
Let's go. I was wondering what you would recommend for integrating modes into kind of blues style licks or playing to make something that's a little bit more angular sounding or a little bit more kind of fusion style based.
Okay. It depends exactly what you are searching for and the exact style. What makes the fusion style angular and again, it really depends on the style, I don't want to say this is the only answer, disclaim and mostly for YouTube.
No, that's not how it works. Okay. Now that's one of the way it works. But one of the way it works is that fusion players tend to stop or hit all the notes outside the pentatonic, but still in the mode.
And they tend to approach them chromatically, usually from below. Example. You are in A Dorian. So play some blues lick right now, so we are out of style in A minor pentatonic. Makes sense, that's pentatonic, kind of a bluesy stuff and it works.
Now, let's start this way. If you are in Dorian, because they will never play Aeolian in fusion, okay, they will play Dorian. You have two extra notes, which are the ninth B and the major sixth, which is F sharp.
Let's start with the B. So I want you to play a blues lick and then just the last note, it's B and end on a B. There we go. Sound jazzy already. Now, same deal, but the last note is B, but you're going to play B flat and slide into B.
Whatever you play just before doesn't matter. Sure. Just get there. A little flat into B. Right. Right. It's already the... it's uncanny, right? They're like, it sounds something so complicated. No, it's the notes, slide from below.
That's it. Next time so far. So far, so good. Do the same with the F sharp. A little like just the same. When you get it to the F sharp, just play one and hold it. Just hold it. Right. Sure. Okay. Now, you may like one more than the other, but they're both typical.
Okay. Maybe not together. Not together. Okay. But you see, it really starts to sound that way. Okay. Okay. So, that would be one first thing to do. Okay. The target, the notes are in the mode, but not in the pentatonic, which are completely out of the chord.
But they tend to stop that on purpose to give that kind of extra dissonance. That makes sense. Now wait. Of course it doesn't end there. Of course not. Now, I am in a... minor one thing you could do would be to play the E minor pentatonic okay now if you play the E minor pentatonic the notes are spell them out E G A B and D fantastic E G A and D are already in the A minor pentatonic.
The difference is that you don't have the C in the A minor pentatonic but you have the B so now automatically you're getting a fifth that's the fifth in the out sorry automatically the fifth of the E minor pentatonic sorry guys it's the ninth of the chord so you could simply just play seven frets higher essentially okay play your blues league actually Don't play blues yet.
Just up and down, you're going to get the blues in a moment. Right, now attention, if you were playing now the E blues scale, you would be adding an extra note, which is A sharp B flat. Exactly, which in theory you're thinking I'm going to play A sharp B flat over an A minor seventh chord, it's going to suck.
That's what the way you do it, instead you do you get to it from the A, that blue note and then you go down. Okay. And play something, then play that. Sure. Right, so here's another, so now we put those two tricks together, so follow me.
Okay. First phrase, you play whatever blues lick you want in A minor, wait, you think, no no no, you play whatever lick you want in A minor and you end up on the B. So you already get that kind of dissonance.
Immediately after, so hold the B, think a moment immediately after, go down using that E minor. minor pentatonic and the blue note okay sounds good but hold it be a moment just to give it a chance and then use the blue note in the in the E minor pentatonic makes sense so one phrase in the A minor and then in B one phrase in the E minor using the blue note sounds good works right yeah interesting yeah okay.
So that's one idea okay there are more ideas at this point I'm just gonna mention a few to you okay one idea is use the pentatonic minor either A or E okay plus the arpeggio of a chord the chord the chord could be in the eighth orient scale that would be the most common situation but you could use an arpeggio that is completely foreign to it okay at this point you get some stuff like that okay.
So if we on an A now we're going to outside territory okay but play an A minor pentatonic just play something in an A minor pentatonic now from there take two or three notes from the B major arpeggio drive mixed next time so play some note from the A minor and some of the B major arpeggio the trick is to not stop you go from the A minor pentatonic.
In the major pentatonic stop and come back to the A minor pentatonic go okay what do you think that's cool man okay now I pick B I will start with major arpeggios out of key okay is there any like guideline for the major arpeggio no it's like literally any major arpeggio it's up to you I like the major I like F sharp major in this situation If I find a pattern I let you know, you can use practically everything.
And maybe some would sound sour to you, and some others would sound better, but I always have with major arpeggios because they're a stronger structure. Eventually, I will move into minor arpeggios or minor seventh arpeggios, which I'll have major arpeggios.
Okay, or stuff like that. Then you can start to put some diminished arpeggio, whatever you want, literally whatever you want. The point is, you start from a good scale, pentatonic, get something strange, as long as this stuff makes as any internal coherence, so it's an arpeggio, and then you go back into the scale, and literally, whatever you play as long as it has some internal coherence, it will make sense.
Cool. It's just that. Yeah, that's cool. It's kind of alchemy to take whatever you want, okay, put it in. But it sounded great, no? So it's more phrasing, timing, and sheer confidence to not stop and play all the wrong notes, and it sounds good.
That's fusion, okay? And again, not to diminish that, but it's sheer confidence. Play all the notes, confidently. Well, you got the idea, yeah, thank you.