La gamme blues

Improvising Around Chord Changes

Now let's talk about improvising around these chord changes in the same way as with Fly Me to the Moon. You have several choices:

• Play in the key
• Play around the chords

One of the ways to play in the key, especially in minor keys, is to use a blues scale or A minor pentatonic.

G Dorian Mode

If we think of the G Dorian mode, remember that it fits:

• G GM7
• G minor 6

This is convenient because we are playing both of those chords in bars seven and eight.

Tip: If you prefer, you can leave out some of those notes and just play the minor pentatonic, which is a crucial sound. You should probably know it already. Some people might add a C sharp to that, creating what's known as a blues scale.

Improvisation Options

So, both of those ideas,

• The Dorian
• The minor pentatonic
• The blues scale

They all work with those two bars of G minor. Because we're coming to rest on G minor here for the first time, we have two bars with basically the same chord, G minor 7 or G minor 6.

That's why it's really effective when you've arrived on G minor to play something a bit more bluesy. If you listen, for instance, to Winton Kelly play this tune, you'll notice that he does that quite a lot, especially in the G minor bars.

Using the Blues Scale

In fact, you can use this blues scale from further back. You could incorporate it right from the start of the 2, 5, 1:

• A half diminished
• D7
• G minor

So let's see what that sounds like with the blues scale and the G blues scale on top:

1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so that's a good thing to practice. Keep going around the 2, 5, 1 over and over, and explore experimenting with different ways of playing around it.

Remember, we did that with a harmonic minor scale when we worked on 2, 5, 1 in a minor in Fly Me to the Moon, and now we're doing it with a blues scale in G minor.

Note Considerations

That's not such an obvious choice of notes, is it? Over a half diminished chord, you've really got to be thinking, "Right, I'm in G minor now," in order to make that work.

But it's surprisingly effective. You're not playing the E flat. You're not playing the A. Those are the kinds of notes you'd expect to play for a half diminished chord. But because we're thinking ahead to the I chord, we're focusing on those notes.