There's More then One Way to Play the Blues

I was sitting in a bar the other day with a blues band on stage, at first I thought “hey this is pretty cool.” but after an hour, I wasn't convinced they had ever changed songs, they just took dramatic pauses every five minutes or so.

Playing the blues doesn't mean you're limited to one twelve bar progression and six notes for lead, chord tones will still give a very strong blues sound if played over that twelve bar progression, however using what we know about chord substitution we can make that twelve bar pattern very different and much more interesting.

Let's do it in C.

C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
F7  | F7 | C7 | C7 |
G7 | F7 | C7 |  G7|

Let's start with common substitutions, firstly the IV7 chord (F7) if often placed in the second measure. That IV7 – I7 progression is very dominant in the blues and can be brought out more.

Secondly #IVdim7 is often placed in the second measure of the second line, the only difference between F7 and F#dim7 is the root, and the root is the b5 of C, otherwise known as the “blue note.”

C7      | F7     | C7      | C7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7      | C7      |
G7      | F7     | C7      | G7      |

Now let's throw in some secondary dominance at the end of all the phrases.

C7      | F7     | C7  G7  | C7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7  G7  | C7  D7  |
G7      | F7     | C7  D7  | G7      |

Now let's change around some of these chords with some like function substitutions, every 7 chord can operate as a five chord, the F#d7 will operate as a VII chord off the minor scale, so we'll get something like this.

C7      | Am7b5  | C7  G7  | C7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7  G7  |C7 F#m7b5|
G7      | Ad7    | C7  D7  |G7       |

Now lastly let's add some tritone subs into the mix.

C7      | Am7b5  | C7  G7  | F#7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7  G7  |F#7 F#m7b5|
G7      | Ad7    | C7  Ab7 |G7        |

And we now have a VERY different progression however, you can still here the progression in there, even though this is an extreme example, now I'll list another example, without going through the process, cookie to the first one to get it right.

C7 Em7b5|F7         | C7  C#7   | C7      |
F7 Bm7b5|F#d7 Dm7 G7| C7  Ed7   | C7  Ab7 |
G7 F7   |Dd7  Bm7b5 | C7  Fmaj7 | G7      |

Again an extreme example, that is probably a little too far gone to be used, but the essence of the blues is still there.

I'm not saying all Blues should look like this, just throw in some variation if you have a lot of blues on your set list, it will keep the audience awake.