Take 5: Jazz Blues Soloing

Jazz musicians have a vocabulary of their own when it comes to the blues. Understanding the nuances of jump blues, swing and bebop can provide you with all kinds of new licks, colors, and ideas to incorporate into your playing, whether you play jazz or not.

David Hamburger’s Take 5: Jazz Blues Soloing features an accelerated curricular approach designed to help you get up to speed quickly on jazz-blues improvisation and soloing.

"Jump blues, swing, bebop and hard bop are all various phases in the development of jazz. Musicians in each of, these eras had their idiomatic ways of approaching the blues form, beginning with the differences in how they thought about the blues chord progression itself. But from the 1930's through the 1960's, you'll find two relatively constant practices: the development of flowing, eighth note lines to create the swing feel, and the combination of blues licks and "playing the changes" to create contrast.”

You’ll start the course with a quick primer where David explains how jazz musicians approach the blues chord progression, how they “play the changes” and how they utilize chord tones, chromatic passing tones, and altered tones. David will then guide you through 5 Jazz Blues performance studies, from basic to more sophisticated approaches.

All of the performance studies are tabbed and notated, and you’ll have the jam tracks to work with on your own. You can loop and slow down the videos so you can work at your own pace.

David will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the soloing Performance Studies. Plus, David includes all of the rhythm tracks for you to work with on your own. Also, you’ll be able to loop or slow down any of the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let’s Take 5 with David Hamburger!

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About the Take 5 Series

TrueFire’s Take 5 courses feature an accelerated curricular approach to help students get up to speed quickly on a particular style or technique. Each Take 5 course starts with a primer on the particular style or technique and then guides the student through 5 performance studies progressing from basic applications to more sophisticated approaches.