Introduction
Tune up

SWINGING A BLUES

As with so much American music, the blues is at the root of many styles of swing, so let’s initiate our introduction to swing soloing by playing a C blues from a swing perspective. We’ll begin by pulling out the root, third, fifth, and sixth of the major scale to form a basic unit for soloing: the major sixth arpeggio. Next, we’ll look at how phrasing affects the sound of these arpeggios and how sequencing from chord to chord—playing a C arpeggio over a C chord, changing to an F arpeggio over an F chord, and so on—works to create the swing sound. We’ll check out a few essential moves, such as chord-tone embellishment, and look at ideas for developing an improvisational vocabulary before wrapping things up with a 12-bar chorus of blues in C, swing style.

Have you ever tried playing a plain major scale in a solo? The poor major scale sounds so lame and exercise-like, yet it’s full of good notes. Let’s take the root, the third, and the fifth (the basic triad tones of a C major chord) and throw in the sixth to make things interesting. The result is called a C major sixth arpeggio.

Example 1

OK, it still sounds a little lame, it’s true. That’s because it’s still just an arpeggio lying helpless on the page. It’s just a skeleton of an idea, not a musical message. Your own skeleton can’t get up and dance all by itself; it needs muscles to pull it around, flesh to hold things together, and your brain up on top to listen to the music and tell the feet, legs, and arms where to go and when.

Example 2 is a dancing lesson for your arpeggio. Slide into every major third with a grace note from a half step below. Rhythmically, this two-octave-plus extravaganza is phrased so that those slides into the major third are always on a strong downbeat—the first or third beat of a measure.

Example 2