Hey all,

If you don't mind, I'm going to throw all my questions and issues in here (where applicable), in order to avoid clutter.

I've been playing for a few years, and now into my 4th/5th year, I've started to become frustrated with being stuck inside the blues scale. Occasionally I punch out, but it's rare, and never really on purpose.

Below is a link to me and some friends playing Bring On the Night, where I do my best to include some elements of the famous Kenny Kirkland solo. Any out-of-key parts were copied, as I don't understand what he does in the Paris solo, especially the modulations in the second half of it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G5QNMSKN

(EDIT: And here's a 2-minute example of me testing my new-to-me old piano with some 12-bar in C. Highlights my blues scale addiction. Sorry for the massive file size! http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NSRO2V42 ).

I've got a solo coming up in a musical performance of Mustang Sally, which is a simple C Blues, with the first 4 bars of C being doubled to 8 bars. I don't know anything outside the blues and C major pentatonic that can be used there to break out, or any useful substitutions (I understand how to figure out a tritone, which is something). I often get stuck in fast blues scale runs and it gets rather repetitive. I'd love some more punch to my solos!

In about 2 months, I'm performing at Lizotte's again (place in the above video), and I'm thinking of doing a trio (me, drums, double bass), but again, it's hard to break out of the scale. I can hear that it's not good enough, but don't understand what to do. I love Oscar Peterson's C Jam Blues, and was going to take inspiration from it, but even that I don't understand!

Hopefully this isn't too cluttered, and you guys can help me out Happy to answer any questions to clarify, and I'll throw them in here as I think of them.

- Brody.

Blues is not so much about scales, but phrases, licks, grooves, melodic motifs.
Listen to Bobby Timmons and Junior Mance (whom has written a really good book on playing the Blues: "how to play blues piano"), search on the Interweb and you'll find it.
Listen to Joe Zawinul when he's playing with The Cannonball Adderly Quintet. The album Country Preacher comes to mind.
On the Kind of Blue album take a listen to All Blues and Freddie the Free loader.
On that note; Wynton Kelly and Red Garland are to great blues/jazz pianists, not forgetting Professor Longhair, Dr John or even Bill Payne (with Little Feat)

You'll find loads of material on YouTube and Spotify.

The key here is to listen and then listen some more. Then start to imitate.

Hi Brody,
Have you checked out Otis Spann or Johnnie Johnson yet? They are great straight ahead blue players. You can learn a lot of stuff from them.
As far as blues/jazz style I would also recommend checking out Gene Harris.

If you can transcribe some Gene Harris solos you'll see that he's using all kinds of devices in addition to blues scale.

Have you done any phrasing exercises or motivic development exercises yet? This is also a great method to expand your soloing. I have seen huge results from my blues piano students when they transcribed and also started working on their phrasing lengths and swing feel.

All due respect, and I'm no educator or anything - just opinionated - but, IMO blues is an "ear" culture. Keep it simple - listen to the New Orleans greats. Try not to make it so difficult - don't over think it. Do you really think James Carroll Booker transcribed his solos? well, maybe, he was fairly well educated. Heck, he was usually in jail and when he was not he was probably giving lessons to the new orleans district attorney's son, Harry Connick Jr check him out on wickipedia == http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Booker. Just listen to Dr John, a Booker disciple. Cop a few of his licks and you'll be good to go. Have fun with it.

check out Dr John or Mose Allison, and play along to it. Best way to know how to put the right amount of each ingredient together.

Hi Daviel,
That's a good point. I completely agree that blues is an "ear" culture thing. The problem that comes in is that some people don't have their ears as developed as others. So, they can listen all they want but they won't be able to access what they're hearing without sitting down and digging into the recordings.

Also, some people do have good ears but they haven't listened to the right type of stuff in order to access or replicate what they're hearing.

Bottom line imho is that blues is a language and just like any language there are some people who will pick it up very naturally just by hearing and some that will have to take more of an analytical approach.

It doesn't matter which way you go about learning as long as you can speak fluently at the end of the day

That's right Steve. I can't tell how many hours I have spent learning that stuff. It takes time and real dedication. I put the James Carroll Booker link in the post on purpose. There are links in his bio to about every important New Orleans player there is. I could not get enough of that information when I first discovered how to play that way. I was just relating that one can learn the licks on paper, but one cannot transcribe the way that genre is really played.

If you have alot of the James Booker sound in your playing I'm sure you're sounding great!