Aug 57 min read

Blues trumpet lesson for beginners

Blues trumpet lesson for beginners!

Playing the blues can be very easy, I have found that one of the main reasons students don't sound authentic is that they ramble on and on never actually playing musical phrases!

This can be easy to master if you practice the correct way.

In this post I will endeavour to teach you two simple ways to take your playing forward, helping you to sound super authentic when improvising on a 12 bar blues.

I once attended a career professional development day for teachers where one of the senior leaders stood up and demonstrated improvisation!

It was truly awful and exactly how NOT to improvise or teach improvisation!

The advice was to simply play anything!

Now I know they were talking about teaching younger students improvisation but here's the thing! All music that has elements of improvisation, has rules!

Jazz

Folk

Heavy metal

Rock

You name it, there will be rules and vocabulary!

To sound authentic, you need to understand the rules, you cant' just play what you want!

Actually you can, but it will sound bad!

Imagine Brian May of the rock group Queen, standing up to play a guitar solo on 'We will rock you' in the style of Django Reinhardt, or folk guitarist Eva Cassidy, whilst he would be improvising it just wouldn't fit the music!

So, what do we need to do to sound super authentic?

We need to use one of the most important elements in jazz music, RHYTHM.

Many people just focus on notes and changes, both very important, but, nothing without great time and rhythm!

Even when I am teaching whole classes or school children how to improvise, my sole focus is on developing their ability to play with good time and syncopated rhythms! It's amazing how authentic they CAN sound when just this simple element is practiced and used in solos!

Okay, enough of my ramblings! On with the lesson!

Here is the blues scale in C, for Bb trumpet!

It is actually derived from the relative major pentatonic, Eb major, where the notes are Eb, F, G, Bb & C. To make it a C blues scale, simply start the scale on the C and add the b5, F#. There you have the blues scale! remember, there is a blues scale for every note. Try to learn it in more than one key!

When I first started, I ONLY knew the C blues scale and was happy to sit in with a local band on a Sunday afternoon/evening at the Clarendon hotel in Deal, Kent in the late 80's! I had some cool stuff worked out and could play some really flashy things, I thought I was great, until....

One Sunday, I was invited up to play (thinking I would be playing my blues in C) along with a girl who wanted to sing.

The band started off (I was already on stage at this point) and I soon realised, they were NOT playing a blues in C, but D.

I did not know the blues scale in D!

I turned my back to the audience and frantically (and quietly) tried to work it out!

It came my turn to solo and I was awful! I couldn't play any or my pre learn flash rubbish (looking back, it really was rubbish). I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me!

I left the stage feeling very embarrassed!

I suppose it could have gone two ways.

I could have been mortified, never got up on stage again and try to foget that awful moment (not really awful in the grand scheme of things, but it felt it at the time for a young 20 something year old). Or
2. I could have realised my mistake (not knowing the blues scale in D), go home and learn it!

Luckily for me, I decided 2! But I then learnt the blues scale in ALL the keys!

I have another very embarrassing story about an evening in the jazz bar 'Ned Kelly's' in Hong Kong whilst there on the world cruise on the cruise ship the QE2. I was orking as the lead trumpet player in the show band! I will save that story for another time but needless to say it involved me wanting the ground to open up and swallow me!

Check out the video I created on using the blues scale and rhythm

If you would like the resources that accompany the video, here is the link (I charge the price of a nice cup of coffee)

https://www.jazzetudes.net/product-page/blues-course-lesson-1

On with the lesson!

So, we know what the blues scale is and the notes in it!

I hope you know what a blues is (can be).

In it's most simple form, it has three chords and 12 bars, looking something like this -

Normally, I would teach students to learn the chord changes and then go on to develop jazz vocabulary, that will be coming in upcoming lessons!

In todays lesson, we are only focusing on improvising with the blues scale, no need to worry about the chord changes!

To sound super authentic though we do need to practice something else!

That is rhythm. Good, strong, syncopated rhythms. This will teach you to play much more sounding music phrases! The resources for the lesson is full of a chorus of authentic sounding rhythms but you don't need to use them, you can create or 'borrow' your own!

To sound great rhythmically, simply use rhythms from famous jazz standards or bebop heads! Check out the examples in the video! You may notice the rhythm in bars 3 & 4 is the rhythm to the famous jazz standard 'Have you met miss Jones?'. You can use any though - 'I've got rhythm', 'A foggy day', 'Honeysuckle rose', 'Don't get around much anymore'.....

Again, check out the video to hear how authentic you can sound.

I know it can be a little one dimensional just using the blues scale but it is a fun way into improvising and can really help with the 'having a go' mentality needed to play jazz.

Don't worry, at first, you will sound not great but with careful listening and understanding what you need to practice and improve, anyone can make amazing progress!

Here is a recording I made of me (Darren Lloyd) just doing what I suggest in this blog post and the lesson.

Just using authentic syncopated rhythms and ONLY the blues scale!