La escala de 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.