Hey, how’s it going guys this is Jon McLennan with Guitar Control, bringing you this video lesson about Freddie Green style of “Chord voicing over just a 12 bar blues”, a Jazz blues.
One of the things that makes a Jazz blues a little different, there are so many different variations to the changes as opposed to a traditional blues that you may used to. Instead of the 5th chord down to the 4th chord,
you do second, fifth and first . In the Key of B flat, which is what key we’re in right now, is going to be a C minor 7 to an F7 to a B flat 7.
We’re going to go over all the chords right now from the top. So we’ve got B flat 7 and we’ve got 6th fret, 6th fret, 7th fret, just those three notes and our strumming is like a real solid quarter note. One, two, three, four, this kind of thing. Again, I’m just dampening all the other strings, muting so I don’t hear the strings ringing open in there.
The next chord is going to be an E flat 7 and that’s going to be 6th fret, 5th fret, 6th fret. Notice I keep the B flat in the bass. So this chord is rootless. Again, in the Jazz idiom bass players are going to like you when you’re
playing rootless voicing because they’ll just play the bass note for you so you get to play all the cool ones. one, two, three, four.
That’s our first four bars. Then we go to the E flat for two bars, back to B flat. And we’re going to go to a C minor 7 which is now moving to the 8th, 8th, 8th, those are the frets there, 8, 8, 8. C minor 7 with the root here and then the F7 is going to be exactly the same as our E flat 7 chord, but now up a whole step. So my second finger, which again, doesn’t have the root in it because we’re coming from this chord is going to have the C in the bass. So I’ve got 8, 7, 8.
For the end, I’m going to do a I, VI, II, V, which is a typical jazz turnaround chord progression. So that’s going to go from a B flat 7 for two strums, I’m going to move that to the 3rd fret for two strums then I’m going to go up and do the C minor and F7.
Cool, so fun stuff. Practice that with a metronome and again just solid quarter note strums and learn the chord voicing. Make sure to subscribe on our YouTube Channel and we’ll see you in our next video lessons, thanks for watching.
