Minor Blues tutorial by Tom Quayle

@infernalgr 9327 wrote:

Ok I’ve been going through this tutorial last night, lot’s of great advice in there, and lot’s of cool sounding chords i didn’t know 🙂

I’ve made a backing track with the chart of progression 5 (blues/funky/fusion-ish) sounding.
I’m planning on doing a video of me playing over it, I love improvisation and that’s why i play guitar, but before i do i just wanna make sure i’m playing the “best” notes i can.

Here’s the chart.

Until now i wouldn’t pay much attention to the chords playing in the background, and i would probably play a pentatonic over the whole thing. Now i can see there are a lot of “hidden” funky sounds in this progression i wanna point out in my solo.

So what i did is i took the chords one by one and made a list of things and notes i should play or emphasize, although i still have some questions.

Am7 = Pentatonic sounds cool but do i have some other choices?

A7#5#9 = I really have no idea, some chromatic stuff sound good but is there something else?

Dm9 = something pentatonic, or dorian? should i include the note F of the chord in my solo? and what if add a B note in the lead too?

Am9 = Pentatonic ? again? :confused:

F9 = There’s a Eb in there… so… :rolleyes: ….. I found a scale called Dominant pentatonic
It’s supposed to work over F7 chords but i didn’t try it yet. It contains : F,G,A,C,Eb ( it’s the chord basically)

E7#9 = No idea:( , something harmonic minor-ish sounds cool, something i can start playing from the F9 and continue to the E7#9. E Bebop minor has all the right notes, but i’ve never played it.

Em7= pentatonic?

Finding the right notes is the 50%, most of the time i find it hard to keep a steady context to the solo, cause many of the above choices are hard to glue together cause they sound quite different.

This isn’t just a question to Tom, anyone that has some ideas and feedback to give, please do.

Thank you.

Stelios.

Stelios, 🙂

First of all, GREAT JOB in your improvisation over the A-minor 12-Bar Blues. You seem to have an excellent feel for what your doing. Furthermore, nice guitar bro! You wrangle some nice tones out of that Suhr. BTW, I particularly liked how you handled bars 16 – 18 (bars 4 – 6 in 2nd cycle!) which occured from (0:37 – 0:44) I believe. That was sweet! 😎

As far as your individual “chord-changes questions” go, I’m certainly NOT any sort of fusion or blues afficianado…:o – (LOL!) That said, I have a few ideas I can share with you, if you’re interested? Here they are:

Am7 = Pentatonic IS COOL! 😉 However, I like to add/mix-in the flat-5/blues-note (“Eb”) as well as the 9th (“B”). I probably picked-up these tendencies from two of my bigger blues-rock influences (Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan) who both seem to frequent those notes in this context.

A7#5#9 = This is “ONE-JUICY-ALTERED DOMINANT-CHORD” isn’t it?!? (LOL!) Anyways, you played through it nicely at (0:37) as I said earlier, but I didn’t (have time to) analyze what exactly you did. Wouldn’t “A-Phrygian Dominant” (V-mode of “D-Harmonic Minor”) work here? (I’ve never tried it, but it seems to make sense in my head?!?)

Dm9 = I like just staying in “A Pent.Minor” but add it’s Aeolian-b6th note (“F”) which as you said, is like thinking “D Dorian.” I love the “F” here because it’s a strong chord-tone (flat-3rd) of the IVminor-chord (Dm9). This stuff is all related, so you say “to-may-toe and I say “to-mah-toe,” as the old-saying goes! (LOL!) Arpeggios and there extensions work great on these chords too (see next chord = Am9!)

Am9 = Again, “A Pent. Min.” here (don’t forget about your arpeggio-options too! You could use some “extensions” here like the basic “Amin-triad” along with the embedded “Cmaj-triad” or “Cmaj7-tetrad,” as well as the “Emin-triad”).

F9 = Yes your “Dominant Pentatonic” has the chord-tones, but I have a more favorite “Dominant Pentatonic” that I love to use (often referred to as “Indian Pentatonic.” It’s spelled: (R 3 4 5 b7) so on an F9, you’d have (F A Bb C Eb).

E7#9 = I liked how you played over this! I think you did the “A-Harmonic Minor/E- Phrygian Dominant” thing, correct? Maybe try “E Half-Whole Diminished” (R b2 b3 3 #4 5 6 b7) = (E F G G# A# B C# D). Try it…you’ll like it!

Em7= Yes Pentatonic NEVER fails, but try some more chord-tone-loaded stuff (ya know, arpeggios and stuff!) I like chord-tone-heavy stuff in turnarounds! Just me…

Good Luck! 😉

~Bill Meehan~

Hey Stelios! Here’s what I’d play over those chords.

Am7 – A Dorian ( it’s the go to sound or scale for m7 chords)

A7#5#9 – This is an altered chord built from the melodic minor scale. It’s built from the 7th degree of a Bb melodic minor scale so you could play Bb melodic minor over it. When played from it’s 7th degree the melodic minor scale is called the super locrian or altered scale. In this case A super locrian. Here’s the notes – A, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F, G!

Dm9 – Again dorian but this time D dorian. Because the blues is not a diatonic progression we treat it modally and just play dorian on all the m7 or m9 chords.

Am9 – same as Am7 – A dorian

F9 – this is also a melodic minor chord. This time the chord built from the 4th degree of C melodic minor. So C melodic minor will fit here really nicely. When played from F, C melodic minor is called F Lydian Dominant. Any time you see a dominant 7th chord that doesn’t resolve down a 5th or up a 3rd you can play Lydian Dominant over it.
Here’s the notes – F, G, A, B, C, D, Eb, F!

E7#9 – This is also an altered dominant chord. Play E Super Locrian over this which is the 7th mode of F melodic minor.
Here’s the notes – E, F, G, Ab, Bb, C, D, E

The Em9 at the end should be an E7#9 again. Sorry, I made a mistake in the chord chart.

Hope that helps. More of this kind of thing in this months tutorial. I’ll record a quick example for you to listen to using these scales and post it soon.

As far as practising changing scales over the chords, make sure you know the scales well first and then try a continuous scale exercise over the progression as outlined in my playing over changes tutorial part 1.

Cheers!

Tom

Uhm, not sure.
I think that lydian b7 is used a lot more for the 4th degree, D9 in this case.