Form and Phrasing

This first unit of The Practicing Blues Guitarist is my prequel to learning to play the changes on the blues. If you feel fluent and satisfied with your pentatonic playing, you'll probably want to skip ahead to at least unit 2, Swing and Jump Blues, or unit 3, Hard Bop and Boogaloo. But if you want to tighten up your blues basics, refresh your pentatonic vocabulary, or are looking for a more organized, reliable way to jump-start your improvisations, this could be a good place to start.

Learn to use blues form and vocal phrasing to create more musical, expressive solos.

In these eleven lessons, you'll learn:

  • how to create more expressive and persuasive solos using the AAB form of the blues
  • how to breathe new life into familiar scale positions by modeling your playing on the call and response and dynamic contrast of blues vocals
  • how to use resolution and thematic development so that you're never at a loss for what to play and don't run out of licks or ideas mid-solo.

Form and Phrasing includes 11 video lessons, each with accompanying pdf charts and/or tab and custom jam tracks to practice to. All streaming videos, jam tracks and pdfs are also downloadable and belong to you forever.

 Here are the topics covered. You can watch lesson 7 in its entirety above to get a feel for the material and how it's presented.

  1.  Long and Short Resolutions
  2. The Lyric Form
  3. Echo and Delayed Resolutions
  4. Diagonal Minor Pentatonic Fingerings
  5. Diagonal Major Pentatonic Fingerings
  6. Contrasting Pentatonics: AAB
  7. Contrasting Pentatonics: ABABCD
  8. T-Bone Walker: Adding Major Pentatonic Notes To The Minor Scale
  9. T-Bone Walker Moves on the Lyric Form
  10. Slow Blues
  11. Triple Feel Double Time Blues

When you purchase the course, you have immediate access to all of the lesson material, and can download, stream and study all of it at whatever pace suits you best. Form and Phrasing introduces important musical concepts for organizing and developing your ideas, concepts that apply not only to basic blues improvisation but to more sophisticated swing and jazz soloing as well. If you're ready to sign up, click the big blue button at the top right of this page.

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