Three-note shapes

Blues in F: Upgrading Your Chords

We're going to play another blues in F with more or less the same chords again. This time, we're going to upgrade to a walking bass in the left hand.

Right Hand Upgrades

• Rather than just playing tritones in the left hand (two notes), we're going to upgrade to three-note rootless voicings in the right hand.

Common Jazz Progression

It's really common in jazz to have a 2-5-1 as the last four bars, this serves as the final cadence in the blues.

In the key of F:

• G minor
• C7
• F major or F7

You remember in the previous tune, the G minor chord was actually a G7 (the two chord). So, this is a little bit more diatonic, it's more in the key of F. You can actually have either chord in that position in the ninth bar.

Rootless Voicings

Let's just look at the rootless voicings. We're going to play:

• 735
• 379
• F7
• 735 alternating

You'll see that in bar four, there's a II V I leading to the IV chord. So we're going to B flat.

II V in Another Key

The two chord is C minor, leading to F9, and then B flat 7. This is a II V in another key, not in the home key. This II V takes us to the IV chord, which is a very common additional move that you get in bar four.

Turnaround Shapes

Let's look at the turnaround as well. Rather than just playing it in tritones, we're going to be playing three-note shapes.

The shapes I've chosen involve:

• A B9 chord on D7
• A B9 chord on C7

These are both 3, 3, 7, 9 shapes. By using them, we can move this right-hand chord shape down in semitones completely parallel, which is really useful and also sounds great.

Conclusion

Alright, so we've still got the tritones going down in semitones while we've added a top note.

Let's try this now in context. Great.

Cut. Yep.