Re-befriending the blues scale.

I have to confess something. By the second or third day of Camp MMW, it was starting to drive me crazy listening to so many pianists play almost nothing but blues scales. Or am I exaggerating? I suppose it just seemed to me that every time I wandered by a jam session or even just one of the many wildly out-of-tune old pianos scattered around the resort, somebody was hammering out some classic (perhaps even cliche) old blues licks. It struck me as weird and funny, although perhaps that's only because when I started to learn how to improvise, my first jazz band teacher pushed us hard to play/solo on the actual chord changes of the 12-bar blues form, rather than just bullshitting blues lines all over the place.



(For those without a whole lot of jazz theoretical knowledge, I'll explain: Let's say you're playing a 12-bar blues that goes from F7 to Bb7 to F7 to C7 and back finally to F7--or some variation thereof. You can actually muddle your way through by playing the F blues scale (F-Ab-Bb-B-C-Eb) the whole way through, without worrying about the underlying chord at that moment. But to move past that basic level and into a more sophisticated jazz sound, you actually play the F dominant scale over F7, then move to the Bb dominant scale over Bb7, and so on....)



So I suppose my jazz snobbery was asserting itself a little bit. But then something happened. In keeping with all the other transformative moments we each experienced over the week, I had a little epiphany about how John Medeski manages to play things that are at once so "out there" and yet so grounded, and it has everything to do with the blues... Not only the blues scale, of course, but the whole sound, feeling, vibe of classic blues musicians.... And suddenly I realized that all those pianists playing blues licks were helping me reacquaint myself with a sound I'd been avoiding, for no good reason.

True, I think as a developing musician I was fortunate to have teachers who challenged me to learn other harmonic ideas, to KEEP learning and filling up my musical vocabulary, and not just get stuck in familiar sounds.

That said, I've been having so much fun practicing the F blues scale lately so I can wail on it in my new song, "Monster." On the piano, F blues is so easy, so comfortable under the fingers. A lot of my other tunes incorporate more modern chords and trickier, unexpected progressions...and I love playing on those, figuring out how to voice-lead on those, devising beautiful melodies over surprising harmonic movement. But last night we rehearsed "Monster," which is the closest thing I've ever written to a true headbanger rock song...and it's clearly going to be a great set-closer for us when we play 49 West in Annapolis and the Streetbeat Festival in Baltimore next week.

What fun it will be to send our love out to the audience one last time, and get down and dirty with the blues.