The tune “Now’s The Time” over a Standard Blues Sequence

Let’s do the same thing now to the second blues we met “Now’s The Time” - an F blues.

That is: let’s put the tune over a standard sequence with the exception that in bar 6 we are going to stick with the diminished, but the changes come from bar 8 onwards.

I’m going to play this a bit faster than the playalong we’ve used before - the Arebersold playalong. I am going to play it at 125% in order to give the blues a bit more urgency.

If you find that’s too fast for you then don’t speed it up - but just to give the blues a bit more of an impact. And talking about impact, when I come to play the blues I’m going to, in the 5th bar which goes … I’m going to emphasise that last note by playing it as an octave … And in the next bar, the same again … just to give it a little bit more umph. Then I’m also going to do something different when I play the tune. I want to play the tune in the middle of the piano and not fight over the voicings.

What I’ll do, I’ll just play the tune using open sevenths in the left hand, even though we are using a rhythm section, which is a little bit counter to some of the things that I have said before. But I’d like you to hear it, I’d like you to have a go, I’d like you to see what you think of it. So it’s going to be … etc. So the first chorus we’ll play in the middle of the piano and using open sevenths. Second chorus we’ll play an octave higher and use the upper voicings …

just playing legato voicings one to the bar. Then we’ll do one chorus where we do the same thing in the left hand, namely legato one chord to the bar, and in the second (next) chorus we’ll use some stabs - probably 2 to the bar. The only thing that’s different here of course is our sixth bar, B diminished … B diminished is a mode of D diminished … when we get there we’ll try and run some of the scale but, otherwise, the main idea again is the hot licks,

the jazz-inflected phrases on the 2 full blues scales: the F blues scale and B flat.