Practice Track A minor Funk

Use this practice track for polishing up your A minor chops. You can use A minor pentatonic, A natural minor, or A Dorian (Dorian mode of G major). There’s just one chord, Am7, with an occasional change up. See if you can figure out the chords in the change up. It shouldn’t affect your scale for soloing too much, although there is D chord which has a F sharp in it, so the A dorian would be better suited than the A natural minor over the change up. The A minor pentatonic has neither an F or F sharp, so isn’t affected.

Practice Track: A Minor Blues

Here is a practice track for beginning or intermediate guitarists to sharpen up their minor blues solos. The Key is A minor – so use the A minor Pentatonic. For a more sophisticated approach, you can also make excursions into the D minor Pentatonic over the D minor Chord. For the E7 chord, try an E minor pentatonic, with some half tone bending on the G! That will take the G up to a G# to match the chord tone in the E7 chord (E, G#, B, D)

Another approach is to use the A natural minor scale, switching to the A harmonic minor scale (or just bending the G’s to G#) over the E7. The tempo is slow and the rhythm is steady to give you plenty of scope for exploring.

A minor Blues

|Am         |               |                 |                    |

|Dm         |               |Am           |                    |

|E7           |Dm         |Am           |                    |

The chords are a standard blues progression, but in a modern style, there is no final E7 chord in bar 12. Instead you will hear four distinctive organ stabs to alert you that you are coming back to the top again.

 

Minor ii-V-I in A minor

The minor ii-V-I is one of the key progressions in all kinds of jazz. The two chord has a flat 5, and the V chord may have a flat nine or a sharp five. They are great fun to improvise over using a harmonic minor scale. The following practice track is in A minor, with a bossa nova feel. An example of a tune using this progression is “Black Orpheus”, otherwise known as “Menha de Carnival”. While any of the A minor scales will work over the progression, the A harmonic minor picks up the “b5” in B minor and the 3rd and the b9 in the E, so will match most closely with the progression.

||: Am                    |Bm7b5              E7b9      : ||

A minor 2-5-1

Enjoy!

Practice Track: A minor blues

The Blues form is one of the basic forms for jamming in rock, jazz, and of course blues. Here is a practice track to help get your chops up to speed on the A minor blues. The chord progression is a typical blues variant, with minor I and IV chords. Often a V chord appears in the last bar of a blues, however this final V chord is often omitted as in this case!

There are many possibilities for soloing over such a progression, a good starting point is the notes of the C major scale, which may also be referred to as the A natural minor scale, or the Aeolian mode of C. This gives us both a flat 9 (F) and a sharp 9 (G) to play over the E7 chord. Alternately, we can use the A minor pentatonic scale, which is in realty a subset of the C major notes, omitting the F and the B. Using the A minor pentatonic, be sure to try bending your G up a semitone  on the E7, and try bending your D up a tone on the Am.

An alternative approach is to bass your playing around the chord arpeggios. We can use the Am7 arpeggio over the Am, the Dm7 arpeggio over the Dm, and the E7 arpeggio over the E7 chord.

We can drop in some colour notes to our arpeggios, seconds work over all three chords, while a major sixth sounds good over the Dm (creating a minor sixth sound). We can drop a #5 (C) in on the E7 (creating an E7#5 sound).

Another possibility is to play with the A harmonic minor scale over the E7, where it has the necessary G# to match with the G# in the E7 chord. This give a  little bit of a gypsy jazz flavour over the straight ahead rock backing. Harmonically, the harmonic minor can work over all the chords – try it out and see it you like it!

Here is the practice track. There are four repetitions of the progression. Play the tune over the first, then take two choruses for a solo, then play the tune again. You will hear the rhythm in the organ count you back to the top in each bar 12, which will help you know where you are in the progression, so you can pick up the tune in the right place again!

 

Rob’s Minor Blues

Rock Practice Track – A

Here is a rock practice track in the key of A. The chords are A, C, D and E – all power chords comprising the root and fifth.  It is done at a slowish 100bpm, so you should have plenty of time to pick up what’s happening. See if you can work out which chords are where using your ear! The note G on the bottom string is used as a bend in between A  chords and E chords – a standard rock and roll move!

Am Pentatonic Rock Practice Track

Practice your improvising using the A minor pentatonic scale, with the addition of a B on the E chords!

Enjoy,

Rob

Practice Track: Waves of the Danube

This is a practice track for beginning to intermediate guitarists and bass players! The Waves of the Danube was also recorded as “Anniversary Song” and appears under that name in the recordings of jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. This track is at a very slow 90 bpm, so beginning and intermediate players can work the changes with plenty of time to get their arpeggios working! In Gypsy Jazz circles, it is played much more quickly, but you have to practice slow in order to play quick! Enjoy!

Waves of the Danube

Soloing over Scarborough Fair

The subject if this post is how to solo over the traditional tune Scarborough Fair. My arrangement of the melody puts it into the Dorian Mode of the G major scale. That is the key is A minor with a major sixth (F#) instead of the usual minor sixth (F). Note that the G is not sharpened by an accidental as it would be in the A harmonic minor scale. A simple way to think of it is as the notes of the G major scale, but with a root note of A instead of G. The tune finishes on its root of A.

The approach is simple: play using the notes of the G major scale throughout! If you are familiar with the arpeggios for the chords used (Am, G, D, and C) your solo will sound more convincing if you outline the changing chords with notes from their arpeggios. Otherwise, use your ear to pick out the notes that go with each change of chord. Use phrasing and plenty of space.

Here is my chart of the arrangement. One of the differences between written music in classical style and the jazz tradition is that classical music is meant to be played exactly as written on the printed page. However in Jazz, the solo performer often takes a lot of leeway with the written tune, adjusting the timing and feel, and even adding or subtracting notes in order to convey their artistic vision of the tune. You can observe this with the simple chart – if played exactly as written, many of the nice nuances of the original folk song will be missed. However the chart in this case gives enough of the tune for you to interpret it in your own style.

An interesting feature of the arrangement is that the tune is 19 bars long: a 4 bar phrase followed by 3 five bar phrases,  which contributes to it’s haunting quality.

Here is a practice track to hone your skills. The melody is played at the beginning and the end, with 4 repeats in between for you to practice your solo.

Scarborough Fair Rhythm Track

Here is the rhythm track again with my solo:

Scarborough Fair

Enjoy!

Practice Track: A natural minor, 3/4 time.

Here is a practice track to help you get familiar with playing 3 beats to the bar. While a great deal of music commonly heard in rock and pop is in 4 beats to the bar, playing in 3 beats to the bar is important for the well rounded musician, even if it’s only so you can play the bridal waltz if you get wedding gigs!

The chord progression is

||: Am         |Am           |G              |Am          : ||

It is a slow (90 bpm) 3 beats to the bar, with each beat divided into shuffle eights, which you can hear if you listen to the drums.

Use the notes of the A natural minor scale (same as C major) to construct a melody over the progression.

Practice Track: A natural minor, 3/4 time

Enjoy!