Making Transitions Over the Blues Pt III

So we are back with third installment of this series of posts which is looking at developing language that can be used as musicians make that transition from the first phrase of the blues to the second phrase of the blues. In essence, we are using the fourth measure to move from say, concert Bb7 to concert Eb7 and we accomplish that by superimposing a ii-7 V7 lick into the fourth measure of the blues in the key that we are moving to. In the case of a concert Bb blues, we are moving to concert Eb.

Last weeks post on this topic involved taking our original lick and providing a basis for altering the rhythm of that lick. If you have not checked that post out click here. So part three or of this series involves extending the transition lick further into measure five. This is accomplished by delaying the resolution of the line to the third of the concert Eb7 chord.

The concert here is a relatively simple one, and consistent with other posts is a universally applied concert - enclosures. Enclosing a note means that we play the note above and then below before resolving to a specific pitch. There are a variety of enclosures, the one I am using here I call "Bow in a Box." A Bow in the box is something we can add as we are coming down a scale. When the fifth of a chord is on the beat, we would play the 4th on the up beat. That 4th scale degree is a half step above scale degree three in both Major and Dominant tonalities. So to enclose the third scale degree, I pop down to the second scale degree and move to the minor third before resolving to the major third. If I spelt this out in the key of C it would be G, F, D, Eb, E. Our goal is to get to E, and we delay that by playing more pitches and surrounding the E before finally resolving to it.

Since our current lick moves from 5 (on the downbeat) to 3, we can easily insert a "Bow in a Box" and delay the resolution of this transition line. Below the idea is included in our lick for different instruments in the key of Concert Eb. I would encourage you to alter the rhythm as discuss in Pt II of this series to get more combinations out of this nugget of language.

Bass Clef Instruments

Concert Pitch Instruments

Eb Instruments

Bb Instruments

adjusted for trumpet range