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This article is hopefully going be the first in a series of articles and videos centring on a Basic Jazz Blues in Bb.
As Advanced Guitar Player has been going for about 3 months now, I've decided that it's time to start creating guitar teaching and learning materials in earnest - otherwise the site will just end up being a crummy regurgitation of other things that can already be found on the Internet.
The more I roam around Internet looking for an angle on things the more convinced I am that for most musicians coming from a blues or rock background - if you don't already have a strong grounding in 12-bar blues you really need to tackle that first - the best way to get a grip on jazz is through messing with a bog standard twelve-bar in B flat.
Anyway, here are the Basic Jazz Blues In Bb changes with chord shapes and tablature - I made this with Guitar Pro 6, by the way, and I plan to upload the full arrangement as a Tab, a Band In A Box file and a Midi file.
Why B Flat? Well, the first thing you need to get your head round if you want to play jazz is that you're probably going to be playing with saxophonists and trumpet players . . . and you can be sure that they won't be pleased if you ask them to play in E. Tenor saxes are tuned to Bb and Altos are in Eb so it's much easier for horn players to solo in Flat keys.
As a matter of fact, much like regular blues tends to be dominated by certain keys (E, A, G and C), you also tend to play Jazz Blues in a relatively limited number of keys - Bb, F, G and C most of the time!
What's more B Flat is a good key to start with . . . it's in the middle of the fretboard and only half a step up from our beloved A, so even though you can't use the open strings you can easily apply most of the licks you know in A by moving them up a semitone.
Why Are The Changes So Simple? Quite simply because a twelve-bar is a twelve-bar and if you you get used to playing in flat keys, not using the open strings or bending as often and playing a bit more chromatically, the differences between jazz blues and the kind of blues you get to jam down your local bar are mainly stylistic.
Talking of chromaticism, the example jazz melody I'll be using over these changes will be Blue Monk - you'll see a more complex lead sheet in the Real Book (available in the Jazz Standards section of Advanced Guitar Player).
Thelonious Monk - even though he's a piano player is a great starting point for guitarist because his angular melodies, whilst not being technically difficult to play, show you very clearly how much harmonic freedom you've got inside the simplest of jazz tunes.
I've used Bb7 on the I Chord only because the shape is very easy to move about which will be useful when we get on to chromatic changes and it's also convenient for the basslines - I actually tend to use 13th chords a lot myself, so I'll probably include them in later lessons. Similarly, I've used 9th chords on the IV and V but could have used 7ths just as easily.
A final point . . . I've decided to go to the V chord (F9) in the 12th bar mainly because this makes the progression more familiar sounding to guitar players from a rock background. However, staying on Bb7 would be more jazzy so you ought to try that to see how it sounds.
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