I often say that playing the blues (or guitar) is a lot like a baby learning to talk… and if you’ve followed me for any amount of time you’ve probably heard that before.<\/p>\n
But I got to thinking about what makes the blues sound like the blues.<\/p>\n
So here’s a real academic description of the blues for ya:<\/p>\n
The blues sound is created by the juxtaposition of a minor 3rd over a chord with a fundamentally major sound.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You can almost think of it like an accent… not really a different language.<\/p>\n
Let’s say that you were improvising over a C7 chord, but you wanted it to sound kind of country…well to do that you’d play the Aminor\/C major pentatonic scale (remember, Amin and Cmaj are the same notes) mostly and it would tend to have a bit of country flair.<\/p>\n
Or let’s say that over that C7 chord you wanted a bit of a jazzy outside sound… you might play the G minor pentatonic scale and it would give you sort of a C11 type of sound… not really outside but definitely not blues. But if you really do want to play pretty far out try a C#minor pentatonic (briefly) over a C7 chord and you’ll hear outside \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
But if you wanted to make your solo over a C7 sound bluesy… all you have to do is throw in a little C minor pentatonic (or C minor blues… they’re basically the same) and it’s going to be instant blues sound.<\/p>\n
Notice that for all that it’s only 1 scale to learn… not 3 or 4 as you might have thought.<\/p>\n
And of course, blues licks (or phrases) have that certain “bluesiness” to them that makes it so they kind of always sound bluesy.<\/p>\n
To me it’s like hearing someone from the south talk… or someone from New York. You instantly know where they come from by the inflection they use and some of the words they choose… it’s their accent.<\/p>\n
Well if you hear a blues player improvise, you’re bound to hear those blues roots come out in the notes he or she chooses and the inflections that come out.<\/p>\n
Now to show this I’ve got a video of a song I don’t care much for at all – it’s David Bowie doing “Let’s Dance.” It was a hit in the 1980’s… but the ending solo (about 3:30 in) is Stevie Ray Vaughan.<\/p>\n
It’s a total pop song and couldn’t be further from a blues sound but as soon as Stevie hits that first note (and unfortunately it’s David Bowie in the video, not Stevie) of the solo you’ll know it’s him and you’ll hear that blues accent all over the place \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n