Hi Everyone,

The next free live lesson will be on Friday at 2PM eastern daylight time. This time we'll be talking about the right hand playing pentatonic scales and the blues...

Here is the Facebook event link, should you want a reminder:

https://www.facebook.com/events/503304923695105/

It will be on my page: http://www.facebook.com/stickist

I hope these lessons are helping you make your social distancing time more enjoyable.

deepest appreciation

Thanks to all who tuned in!

Here's the archived video:

https://www.facebook.com/stickist/video ... 576358775/

and here's the (corrected) pdf:

http://greghoward.com/free_hands/lesson ... _Blues.pdf

Another great one from Greg.

Professing not to qualify in blues, you played the blues from start to finish. You played the hell out of the blues Then you imported other chords and substitutions from the circle of 5ths. It only got better.

And you're right, those faraway LH chords with 10ths and b7ths above (sans the 5ths) lend themselves well to a single RH minor pentatonic mode (miracle of miracles), which alsovcserves as a basis for string-bending blues lines. One size fits all.

I discovered it too, listening to John Coltrane's LPs, and used that portion of music theory in my song arrangement of "My Favorite Things", moving forwards and backwards through the circle of 5ths. What I didn't know at the time, and what Greg has now made me aware of, is that the continued absence of the 5th in the LH accompaniment, so easy to play on Stick, enables such chordal movement.

Here Greg is teaching the minor pentatonic mode as the basis of the blues scale. From there you can bend up to those other blue notes - minor 3rd to major 3rd and the infinity of personal styles in between, also the 4th degree to a raised 4th (then to the 5th) all done by pitch-bending or playing the note clean (which Greg mostly does).

If you move to the relative major of the pentatonic but keep the root at the same key, you'll have two more useful notes to add to the blues scale, the natural 2nd and 6th degrees. Then you have a whole lot of notes: root, 2nd, b3rd, 3rd, 4th, #4th, 5th, 6th and b7th, a 9-tone scale with tons of expressive bending and vibratos.

And, if you're Aretha, you can throw the pitch of a b7th a bit above or below the note, but "you've got to feel it". Then there's the Clapton kinda' major 3rd.

Thanks Greg for the blues lesson. I'm just trying to add a bit. Who says we've never had some blue times?

Thank you, Boaz and Randy,

And Emmett, thanks so much for taking the time to check it out. I know how busy you are these days, so I really appreciate the comments, and especially the amplitude for bending. I even mentioned in the lesson that I should do more of it.

I think there are certain genres that The Stick really lends itself to very naturally: blues, reggae, two-part inventions, Latin jazz, progressive rock.

With blues, for me, it's all about being able to phrase melodically against a simple but interactive accompaniment. That scale lays under the two sides of the right hand perfectly.

Here's to sunnier times ahead!