From the course: Beginning Blues Keyboard
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Blues tension
- Now there's a second type of harmonic tension that happens in the blues, as well. When we play the blues scale on a major blues, we're really playing a minor scale over a chord that contains a major third. I'm going to play a voicing for G7 on my left hand, and a lick from the G blues scale in my right hand. Now in my left hand, I can just play the third and the seventh of the chord, B and F. Those are the two tones that really define the chord. Here's B and F. I'm actually going to invert these two notes making it F and B, because that puts the voicing right in the range where I want to play it. Okay here we go. Listen for the tension. That's the sound of blues harmony. (playing blues on piano) You can get a feel for this sound a little bit more by playing some dominant chords in your left hand. In a moment we're going to play along with our base player. We'll let him take care of playing the root of each chord, and we'll play the thirds and sevenths. Let's do this in the key of G.…
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