00:00So I'm going to talk a little bit about how jazz has influenced my blues playing.
00:09I have probably listened to more, I don't like the word jazz, I have to say, but what else are
00:14you going to do?
00:16More jazz in my lifetime than any other form of music.
00:20I listen to a lot of blues, but I don't really listen to that much blues any longer.
00:26You know, I've just digested it and I play it so much.
00:30Then I'm looking for other things to, you know, influence me.
00:35However, that said, I still listen to many of the old jazz records that I used to listen to.
00:41And that would be John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter.
00:45Those three in particular, I would consider my strongest influences in jazz.
00:52But also very much a big fan of Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk, and Archie Shep, which is somebody that a
01:02lot of people don't know about.
01:04In Europe, I think he actually had a pretty good career.
01:07But in the United States, people don't know who Archie Shep is.
01:12They're all tenor players, except Miles, of course, who's the trumpet player.
01:17And so there's that harmonic influence, you know, really it's just a harmonic influence on a traditional form.
01:24So if somebody plays, he's playing a blues in G7, their five chord, four chord, right?
01:36Maybe a nine, you know.
01:38So there's a little jazz influence in there, right?
01:41That ninth, thirteenth.
01:46But when you play a raised nine chord for your five chord, you've got two options there for altered tonalities
01:56that you can use, you know?
01:59So a D raised nine, all the notes in a D raised nine chord are found in the diminished scale.
02:08You might call it the double diminished scale, which is a series of half steps and whole steps.
02:25Not that.
02:26Just that.
02:33So that is a big thing for me.
02:45Right?
02:47Right into some funk.
03:06This kind of thing.
03:07Right there, I actually did not play diminished.
03:10I played the second of those two scales, which is half diminished and then half whole tone.
03:17So it begins the same way of half step, whole step, half step, and then it's whole step, whole step,
03:24whole step, whole step.
03:30And that's where that note can be added.
03:40I'm losing it.
03:41I'm losing it here.
03:51So that's half diminished, half whole tone.
03:53And it's referred to as the altered scale.
04:15That was just diminished arpeggio.
04:20Off the V chord.
04:22Off the V chord.
04:30Right?
04:31Something like that.
04:32So this is how it appears in my playing.
04:36It's wonderful to be able to expand on the simple blues.
04:46And somehow, I found myself to be a blues guitar player.
04:51I always wanted to be a jazz guitar player.
04:53For a while, I wanted to be a jazz saxophone player, which was my first instrument.
04:58But I was never really very good on it.
05:00And the guitar just came a lot more naturally to me.
05:04And I think that's the case with people.
05:06Like, they're built for something, kind of, you know.
05:09They're built for one of these instruments, you know.
05:13So the guitar was it.
05:15And so my love of blues and my love of jazz, I found a way to put them together.
05:22And it influenced my writing to where the chords that I would learn in studying jazz,
05:28which basically for me was just, I learned chords.
05:31I learned the jazz chord vocabulary.
05:35And I learned the scales that ran through them.
05:37And that was it.
05:40And I approached those scales the same way that I approached the pentatonic scale.
05:44Just play it.
05:45Play it until you find some things that you like, you know.
05:48And also, kind of, picking up on what I was hearing from other players.
05:53But I'm in no way as sophisticated of a jazz guitar player as someone like John Schofield.
06:00You know, or Kurt Rosenwinkel, certainly.
06:05I'm not those guys.
06:06I'm a blues guitar player.
06:08But I can use that, you know, that influence to open up my blues playing in a way that surprises
06:15people.
06:15You know, because you only hear it in jazz.
06:18That kind of harmony.
06:19You really only hear it in jazz.
06:22So yeah, those two scales, the diminished, half-step, whole-step.
06:32I'm in D.
06:38Altered.
06:39Or, excuse me, diminished.
06:42So that would have that note instead of that.
06:47The fifth would be natural.
06:56If you play it altered, there's the diminished.
07:02And then it's a raised fifth.
07:08The diminished has eight tones.
07:10So that can kind of throw a person.
07:16But the half-diminished, half-whole.
07:18There's your diminished.
07:25Has the same as Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.
07:30That's a funny sound of Do, Re, Mi, isn't it?
07:32Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.
07:36That's because they're altered.
07:39The fifth in particular is outstanding.
07:44It's a third.
07:46It's a raised fourth.
07:48Raised fifth.
07:50Seventh root.
07:56And people don't realize they can just play the scale.
07:59That's enough.
08:00End of a blues.
08:09Right?
08:12So, those two scales, I'm telling you.
08:16The diminished and the altered.
08:18Those two scales on a five chord.
08:20It's an altered five chord.
08:23Okay.
08:24Okay.
08:41Oh, my.
08:44Oh, my.
08:55Oh, my.
08:57Oh, I like it.
09:00Oh, my.
