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Probably should have called this "Getting Bluesy", but I think of it as "Getting Church". African American Church musicians are some of the funkiest, bluesiest best players I have ever seen. It's incredible what some people get out of church. I would never have gotten that kind of musicality out of my church. The music was lame as I remember.

I'm not even religious, but I have gone by some churches and wanted to go in and listen and watch really bad!

So.... Get Church.

I think we might have done this tune before. But I thought we should revisit it. It's perfect and no matter what level you are at, if you really study this tune a bit, you will learn quite a bit about harmony and what's happening.

It's a tune of 2 5's and that needs to be the basis of our studies. If you can navigate easily through two fives you are really on your way to get through harmony.

This tune is a study of Major two fives, even though it's a minor tune.

Here we go!

Blues for Alice

Simple line I like over dominant chords

An experienced vibe player plays a lot less roots than an inexperienced one. We know that roots for us do not move the harmony, the upper partials do. I've talked extensively about this on vibes workshop.

Also with a bass player there's no need to play the bass notes right? So work on your rootless voicings.

One thing I've talked about is the following. Play these chords:

Fmaj7
E triad / F
Emin7

That's what the chords look like without the roots. That's a ii V I in the key of C. Play it you'll see.

Day 2: We've changed the top note of each chord to a G. No matter where the harmony goes, this is the note all the chords hover around. These are closed position chords.

This is one way I think of playing the vibes. The great think is this way of thinking gave me many many ideas and concepts for practicing!