Adding Blues to a Major Chord
Lesson time: (1min 5sec)
Ollie Weston shows how to add bluesy touches over a major seventh chord on saxophone, bringing some grit to an otherwise soft, diatonic sound.
Course preview
This lesson is part of the course Exploring Jazz Saxophone: Part 1 - Getting Started
Watch a preview of the full course below.
Lesson transcript:
Adding Blues Touches to Major Seventh Chords
Another useful device over major seventh chords is to add some blues touches.
I've always referred to the blues as being a sort of ever-present kind of musical DNA throughout music. This approach will really give you some variety and can be quite surprising, quite startling, in the very soft texture of the major seventh chord. Suddenly, introducing something a bit more gritty.
Example Phrase
Here's a nice major phrase:
This phrase is entirely within G major, meaning it's diatonic, there are no notes outside the key.
I'm now going to add some bluesy touches to it.
I'm still ending on my major third:
- G (root)
- B natural (major third)
As per the G major key signature, I still end on a B natural. But to make it sound really bluesy and clashy, I don't have to do that.
About the instructor
Since graduating from the Leeds College of Music (BA Hons) and the Guildhall School of Music (Post Graduate Diploma in Performance), Ollie has built a busy and varied career in music. As a saxophonist he has performed in live and studio settings with artists as diverse as Amy Winehouse, Tim Minchin, Bonobo, Frank Turner, the London Jazz Orchestra, the Hackney Colliery Band, the Ambient Jazz Ensemble and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. He is also the co-leader of the jazz quartet 'Time Is Of The Essence', and composes and arranges material for this and other ensembles. Ollie is active in music education, currently as course leader for the jazz department at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (junior school), where he runs jazz ensembles, big band and theory classes. He has written a series of 'Exploring Jazz' books for Schott Music that are published worldwide and feature on exam syllabuses in the UK. Ollie has also run workshops for Oxford University, Pro Corda Strings and BABSWE, as well as the Guildhall School of Music summer schools. In his Exploring Jazz Saxophone courses, Ollie takes you from getting started right through to soloing confidently over songs and chord sequences, building the improvising skills that put a real jazz player's vocabulary at your fingertips. read more