Now let's add a little more oleo to the skillet and fry us up a greasy minor blues.

This is a 12-bar blues in C minor, without to many alterations. In contrast to our standard C blues example we looked at earlier, here the chord fragments suggest MORE harmonic movement than the changes themselves suggest.

In measures 1-2 we basically stick to the basic fragments for C-7 and C#7b5 (theory note: Db7b5, notated by groovemaker enharmonically as C#7b5, is a b5 substitute for G7. Try playing Ab melodic minor over this measure...yummy!!).

In measure 3-4, we superimpose a II-V-I leading to F minor. This is called backcycling.

In measure 5-6 we add a bit of color to our F-7 by playing a minor 6th fragment shape. Take a second to look at this familiar and usful shape. It's our friend the tritone, except here it functions as an F-6 chord. You can see how versatile fragments can be as this tritone could also be used for Bb7, E7, or D-7b5, as well as many others.

In measures 7-8 I introduce a common voice leading cliche' found in many types of music, the R-7-b7-6 line so commonly associated with "Stairway to Heaven". You may remember it from page 2 of this lesson. The lead sheet does not suggest this change, but you can use the fragments to inject the added line nicely into your comping.

Measure 10 uses a #5 on top of a G7 fragment to suggest Gaug7, also an embellishment of the lead sheet changes.

In measure 11, we see our friend the tritone again, this time functioning as Cmin6.

We also anticipate measure 12's G7 by superimposing it's related IImin chord, D-7b5.

The final chord is one of my favorites, a C-maj7add13 (C melodic minor sounds great over this chord!).

Try jamming over this by changing the playback to measures 1 thru 12 and looping it. And again, if you remove the groove track, you will still hear all the harmonic information (and more) suggested in the chord changes.