Minor Blues Course with Matt

Records & Albums Blues Recordings
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Hi everyone,

The Minor Blues Progression course is almost finished.

Here’s 5 of the 6 lessons:

Lesson 1: Intro To The Minor Blues:

Lesson 2: Enhancing The Minor Blues Form:

Lesson 3: Minor Pentatonic Scale Improvisation:

Lesson 4: Combining Modal & Pentatonic Scales:

Lesson 5: Basslines & Left Hand Patterns:

The final lesson is a minor blues jazz standard “Mr PC” where we apply all of the above material in the context of an actual tune.

The full course page will be published shortly, in the meantime checkout the above lessons and we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

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Awesome! Looking forward to this!

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Great!

The full course will be up and running soon.

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Fantastic Hayden!!!

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Glad you like the look of it Paul… more to come shortly!

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Great tutorials on these minor blues lessons. I can’t wait for Mr. PC. I mentioned a while back to Hayden to incorporate this kind of material within his courses and my dream and wish is forth coming . You reference lesson 6 in the lesson 5 video on Walking Bass but I think Lesson 6 will be Mr. PC. Thanks a lot.

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Hi George :wave:

Thanks for the feedback and glad to hear you are liking the course.

Yes that’s right… thanks for spotting that lesson 6 reference… I will change that and reupload.

The final lesson will be finished shortly.

Hayden

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Great course hayden thank you very much.

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Hi all,

Lesson 6 on the tune “Mr PC” is now finished. Check it out here:

This is the final lesson in Matt’s course and applies all of the information covered in lessons 1 through 5.

The Minor Blues Course page will be up and running shortly, I have a few tweaks here and there to get everything looking perfect.

Hope you enjoy it and any feedback be sure to let us know :sunglasses:

Cheers.

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Have just rejoined .Does this 6 part Minor blues course replace an earlier one with about 14 parts.
I cannot find the earlier course now.

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Hi Rob,

You can find a course on the standard 12 bar blues here: https://www.pianogroove.com/blues-piano-lessons/12-bar-blues-improvisation/

This course has an improvisation-focus and we discuss and explore lots of important concepts for improvisation.

Let me know if that helps!

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Hey !

(i never know what are the good areas to put my questions but i think this one is fine)
Im drilling through the second lesson of the minor blues and i have some questions:

  • can we play all inversions ( rootless and not rootless)

  • also can we play an approach diminshed chord to the C-7 like we did with the Edim approaching the F-7 chord

Thanks !

–Guillaume–

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Hi Guillaume,

Yes you could certainly use a diminished chord to approach the C-7.

Regarding the Edim7 chord approaching F-7:

The Edim7 chord can also be seen as a rootless C7b9 chord

If you take the notes of Edim7, we have E-G-Bb-Db, and if we add a C in the bass, we then have C7b9.

This is true for all diminished chords, and often they are functioning as dominant chords in disguise.

So the Edim7 to F-7 could be seen as a C7b9 to F-7 which is simply a V7 - i-7 resolution.

Coming back to your question:

For the final chord in the tune, Matt shows a number of different tensions that can be played over the G7 chord taking us back to C-7 at the top of the form.

He does actually use a diminished chord at 7:07 in the tutorial:

diminished%20chord%20approaching%20C-7
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He calls it a rootless G7b9, which as we just identified above, is also a diminished chord.

It looks like a Ddim7 chord. However, it’s also important to understand that diminished chords are symmetrical in the sense that when we invert the voicing, we have the same interval combination.

So Ddim7 is also Fdim7, Abdim7, and Bdim7.

Furthermore, each one of those diminished chords can function as G7b9, Bb7b9, Db7b9, and E7b9.

That’s quite a lot to take in, but check out this lesson for more information:

Diminished theory is a fascinating subject, our course on diminished chords contains lots of great application examples.

We also have a thread on Diminished Scale Theory that you might find interesting:

Cheers.