 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel School of Music. Let's learn some blues in this lesson. So I'm going to teach you a left hand bass blues pattern very much derived and inspired from a bass instrument like a bass guitar or a trombone if you play, if you've seen a trombone player. And the right hand is going to do some really simple stuff on the dominant 7th chord. But how I'm going to explain this lesson is I will teach you a bass line which I think anyone can do. It's a very, very simple passage. All you need to know is know your major scale and I'm going to guide you along with that. And the right hand is going to basically play a chord in the blues progression. So first off, there's going to be some theory. So stick around till the end of the lesson, there's going to be lot of patterns and so on. But I'll first have to talk about some theory, the scale, the chords, the formation and all that. Okay, so let's get cracking. Before we do, it'd be great if you can hit that subscribe button, turn on that bell for regular notifications. Let's go. So the blues progression I've chosen B-flat blues or you can say the key of B-flat for this illustration. In the B-flat scale, what you really need to know for the blues or anything is the progression ends up being over 12 bars. So let me run you through the chords. It'll be chord number one, that's B-flat major. And how we play blues chords is we play them all as dominant seventh chords. So instead of just playing it as B-flat major, we go B-flat seventh. Not B-flat major seventh, B-flat dominant seventh. So to get a dominant seventh sound, you play the major chord and then you find a flat seven. So the flat seven as I've explained in a lot of other lessons in the past can be found by playing the triad, then finding the root or I like to do the octave and then do a minus two. That gives you the dominant seventh vibe. Now if you know your inversions, you can play the same B-flat major chord this way. And then you get the seventh chord, the seventh flat note. Just remember that for B-flat seventh, the seventh is A-flat which is a flat seven. So you just need to know your triad B-flat major and then add the A-flat to it. So if you like this inversion of B-flat, fair enough. You get it there. Okay? So B-flat major, you've got yourself all the inversions, same story you need to do with the four chords. So with blues, remember the one chord is important, the four chord is important and the five is important. So in the B-flat major scale, you have seven notes, B-flat, B-flat, C-D, E-flat, F-G-A-F, B-flat, B-flat, A-G-F, E-flat, D-C, you have all these seven notes, B-flat, B-flat, C-D, E-flat, F-G-A-F, B-flat, B-flat, A-flat, A-flat, A-flat, A-flat, you have all these seven notes. So you need to consider the chords formed out of the one, the four, E-flat and the five, which is F. And the eventual chord would be B-flat, dominant seven, then you want to work your way through the E-flat chord, E-flat, dominant seven. So where's the flat seven of E-flat? The D-flat is that, right? Then we do F-major, whichever inversion, you whack it down and then you ask yourself, what is the flat seven of F-major, which happens to be E-flat. So I'd leave the inversion forming to you, you could probably pause the video, practice your inversions or better still, you could play along with the lesson. We have everything written down as always in most of our YouTube videos with my hand written notes. You can get yourselves a copy, pause the video, head over to Patreon and that'll also help our channel grow. Okay guys, so moving forward. So the right hand will play the 12 bar progression, but you need to know your 12 bars. So again, see the notes, it'll be Roman I or the first chord played four times. So I, second bar, remember it's a seventh chord. Second bar, fourth bar. So when the fourth bar ends, B-flat is done and dusted. Then what do we do? We then move to the E-flat dominant seventh chord, which is played twice. So Roman I, the one chord is played four times, four bars. Roman IV will be played twice. So B-flat, B-flat, B-flat, B-flat and now we go to E-flat. E-flat, which is the four twice and then back to our luck, we come back to B-flat, B-flat and then the F, only once of F, F7, so F-once, E-flat once and then end on the one. Now there are a lot of ways people manipulated a little bit in the blues progression I am proposing. It's one twice at the end. So B-flat, B-flat, so the whole thing again, you can even consider playing the roots of the chords in your bass register. B-flat, B-flat, B-flat, B-flat and now we go to E-flat dominant seventh, back to B-flat twice and then the F and then the E-flat, B-flat, repeat the B-flat and that's the first thing you would need to practice. If you haven't done that already, practice that first and now moving on to the actual part of our discussion which is to bring the left hand and right hand together. So we start with the left hand bass pattern and I have done a lot of blues lessons in the past and to a point that we now have a playlist on the YouTube channel, you can just go to the channel page and search for all the blues lessons we have done or if you are finding that a bit tricky you can go to our website nathanielschool.com, free tutorials and you can filter it out to blues and you have a lot of blues instruction there and rock and roll for those of you who like the more jumpy version of blues. So coming back to the movement, so each of my chords, so if I play B-flat dominant seventh it's going to kind of have a bass line which will be something like that. This is the elaborate one and it's played over the 12 bar. Now we are not going to start with that elaborate version, I am going to take you step by step. So what you need to also do now is in your books if you are writing this down, write down the notes of each of the chords. So then your right hand becomes something which can be like a muscle memory, you just feel it and go with the right hand because you need to pay a lot of attention to your left hand in this concept or in this chapter where in your right hand just becomes a muscle memory thing or in autopilot. So practice your right hand even though this is about the left hand, practice the right hand. Now the left hand I am going to just show you one bar of data and that one bar is going to keep growing as we do our lesson. So the first I think version which all of you can try and this requires the knowledge of intervals. So you need to map out your B-flat root and the first process will be to play 1, 3, 5, 6 of the B-flat root and that's one bar, 1, 3, 5, 6, 1, 3, 5, 6 okay in terms of swaras I am doing, I advise you to sing it as well, or you could do B-flat, D, F, G, if you like that or those are the interval names in India at least. So that's one bar. So if you have 4 bars of B-flat you will be going 2nd, 3rd, what's next E-flat, E-flat comes up. So then you need to take the E-flat root, transpose this to the E-flat root and then go for it. Now you may be arguing do you transpose it with respect to the B-flat major scale? No, that's not how blues work. So you take a chord, B-flat and whatever line you play is based on that root. So B-flat, major 3rd, perfect 5th, major 6th. So if you go to E-flat then from the E-flat true root you do E-flat, it's major 3rd, it's perfect 5th and it's major 6th which is 1, 3, 5, 6, E-flat, G, B-flat, C. So that happens twice and then we come back to B-flat. So when you're doing the 12 bar form my advice to you would be to do it line by line. So first master line 1, only B-flat, super easy. Say I repeat, let me slow that down, slow it down and then we go to E-flat which is the second line played twice back to B-flat, played twice, okay. Let's just do those first 8 of the 12 bars again, B-flat, 2, B-flat, 2, 2, B-flat, B-flat and E-flat, E-flat. You need to know when that change is coming, right? B-flat, B-flat and then the F chord which I haven't taught you yet, F, super easy F, A, C, D, 1, 3, 5, 6, 2, E-flat back to E-flat and end on B-flat and your right hands playing the chords of this bass line. So a normal piano rhythm pattern what tends to happen is we play the roots of the chords in our left hand. We don't play a bass groove, we don't play a bass line and that's what the blues is here to teach you. Develop your left hand more like a bass instrument, for all the funky stuff and all of the grooves which you would want to play emulating sort of like a drum and bass concept here, okay and the right hand will be for comping the chords or playing melodies and so on and so forth. Okay let's do that again the whole 12 bar, second B-flat, third B-flat, fourth again B-flat, changing to E-flat, E-flat, B-flat, B-flat, last line F, E-flat, all dominant chords in the right hand. Okay this is the core variation which I'm sure you guys can all do. If you're having an issue playing the dominant 7 chords in your right hand don't worry you can even play a major like normal triads in the right hand. But if you can bring in that dominant vibe which sounds a lot more heavier and epic. So coming back to the left hand, let's grow the left hand by adding one more ingredient okay and step by step this is all there in my note so you may want to get yourselves a copy of this in the link in the description. So you go that's your original one now. So we divide that last crotchet or quarter note into two eighth notes so that will be what was once now becomes so one bar will be okay with the right hand a little bit can even hold your chord in the initial stages until you get used to the left hand. Now don't forget to count 12 bars I'm now on E-flat the fifth sixth and now the seventh of B-flat eighth B-flat F 9 bar E-flat 10th bar B-flat 11 B-flat 12 you could also make your right hand a bit more choppy you can go 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and we also call that the Charleston rhythm pattern a very idiomatic rhythmic phrase which lot of blues and jazz musicians use so it's at the 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and you could also play the Charleston in a displaced form you can go 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 right I have notated this as well you could check it out in the notes and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 displaced normal okay now that has to somehow happen over our bass line there we go and now F bounce the thing as you gain more confidence ultimately you need to swing this dum-pa-dum-pa-dum-pa-dum-pa you need to feel that swing very important dum-pa-dum-pa-dum-pa-dum-pa-dum-pa you don't want to do that'll be more rock and roll I guess and you'll want to play that faster so for blues swing so you may want to also jam along or practice this scenario with a few drum tracks a few backing tracks or a drummer friend if you have one or anyone who plays the blues it'll always be nice to jam with someone is a jamming genre okay so let's upgrade our left hand even further we started with that then we did very cool and pick up at the end now what if I make this one bar phrase into a 2 bar phrase let's see what happens there okay so what did I do there 1 3 5 6 7 flat 6 5 3 so that made it into 2 bars so you could combine it with the other variation again invest your time only on the B flat triad the B flat seventh chord and then make your way to E flat once you've written it down of course F now that there's an interesting case with F because F has only one bar so you can't really do the whole double bar thing you can't you won't have time for that so F E flat B flat so whenever you have two bars for a chord then you do 1 3 5 6 7 flat don't forget it's 7 flat not pump pump pump party don't ever play the 7 major in blues people will get really angry with you okay actually even for rock music in general the 7 is flattened while playing most of the genres we actually like come to think of it okay so variation 3 I hope that was clear let's do that again and back half of F okay why don't we try one or two final twist to this thing okay so two eighth notes one at the end of bar one and the other at the beginning of bar two yeah so one two three four and one and two and yeah one two three four and one and two and three and for again to and three and four and one and two and three and four okay more eighth notes okay I'd like to leave you with one more cool thing which I keep doing for some reason you go that's more like a triplet run let me try and break that down 1, 3, 5, 6, 5, 7, flat, 5, 6, now the triplet comes in that's 5, 6, 5, that's 3, flat, 3, you should do it a bit more like faster so then becomes more subtle you don't do it on F right guys so that was 12 bar blues left hand bass line which I think you can pretty much play an entire gig just this with just this bass line and the right hand as I told you earlier plays that more of that Charleston rhythm vibe and a good way to practice the blues especially the right hand in general even with the bass line snap at the 2 and the 4 a 1, 2, 3, 4 a 1, 2 so don't go 1, 2 you won't feel the blues if you go like this okay so you go 1, 2, 3, 4, a 1 now it opens up to so feel that vibe of 2 and 4 that'll really get the blues pumping having said that I've talked a lot about this stuff in great detail in the blues playlist it's in the description or you can find it on the channel or on our website somewhere so do continue the blues study and if you already do play the blues if you've started your journey do let me know in the comments what you'd like me to teach or what are the areas which you're finding difficult in this particular genre I will try and research it I'm from India so it's not natural to play this but I've been fortunate to play with a lot of blues musicians along the way in various parts of the south wherever I've gigged and I really think that blues is a genre which shapes you as a music person you know it if you can play the blues even if you're a like a like a death metal musician or something like that or a musician who likes playing you know R&B or those sort of genres you should always come from the blues it's the most influential contemporary genre by contemporary I mean music after the classical time so if you can play the blues well if you can count the 12 bars it's a great discipline to then play other forms of music so most of the bands I've played with have been fortunate that we all are blues lovers so sometimes we'd start like a hard rock rehearsal with slow blues bb king style blues why we do that is a we love it we enjoy it and b to get us into the vibe and also to know each other better blues is another genre where you can coordinate with four or five musicians in a room and it's a way to kind of chat with each other it's a good way to communicate this genre okay guys hope you found the lesson useful again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel school do give the video a like which is that thumbs up thing there leave us a comment share the video with your musician friends and do consider following us on patreon we have also members videos options on youtube you can also consider joining an actual course with with me and the other faculty at Nathaniel you can head over to our site fill up a simple form and our team will reach you cheers