Why Blues Players Blow Jazz Players Out of the Water

The first instrument I became obsessed with wasn’t piano. It wasn’t even saxophone.

Nope, my first love was the good ol’ electric guitar.

I practiced incessantly – night after night, putting off my ­seventh-grade math homework as long as possible.

All I wanted was to be able to play like Texas blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan. I learned his licks, imitated his phrasing, and even got myself a cowboy hat.

But man, that guy was untouchable. He willed his guitar to life, and it obeyed him like a trained German Shepherd. And the craziest part of all was that each solo he played consisted of only six notes with rare exception.

Those six notes, of course, made up the blues scale, and SRV managed to improvise chorus after chorus after chorus without sounding the least bit stale.

Unfortunately, there are many jazz improvisers out there about whom I can’t say the same.

How is that possible?

How come a soloist well-versed in tritone substitution, Coltrane changes, and the Lydian Dominant scale can sound less interesting than a blues guitarist playing a simple, six-note scale for dozens of choruses?

My old favorite maxim rears its familiar head:

It’s not the notes you play, it’s how you play ‘em.

I speak from experience in this department – my story continues…

In high school, as I became less obsessed with SRV and more enamored with the likes of Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, and John Coltrane, my playing took a turn for the worse.

Sure, I had studied more scales and had memorized a hundred jazz standards, but in doing so, my solos ended up sounding…distracted. Like the musical equivalent of ADHD.

I hear the same scattered, pocketless playing in many of the students with whom I work. Like Pandora’s Box, the allure of music theory, especially in the jazz world, can take its toll.

Which is why I assert the “limitations” of a blues player are, in fact, his or her greatest gift.

Not having to worry about guide tones, approach tones, and tritones gives you the headspace to focus on more important things like phrasing, rhythm, and motivic development.

Plus, when you learn to will your instrument to life with the blues scale, you’ll end up playing more soulful solos with hot, edgy lines that’ll make you and your audience squinch their noses and furrow their brows into the stankiest stank faces around.

But there is a catch…

Simply playing Bb Db Eb E F and Ab over a Bb blues is not gonna cut it. You have to know what you’re doing if you want to actually sound good playing the blues scale. Most folks take the former route and end up sounding like amateurs.

I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to you, which is why I’m excited to share with you all that I know about blues scale improvisation in my course:

Improvising with the Blues Scale (without sounding like an amateur)

Enrollment for this baby only opens up a handful of times a year, and the door closes shut today.

So, click here to learn more, shoot me an email if you have any questions, and I’ll see you in class!

Happy Shedding,

Jeff