Blues Piano Guide

This guide is a basic starting point for learning the 12 bar blues. These notes are a helpful reference.
They do not replace deep listening and transcribing the recordings. The type of blues found here is in
the style of 1960s and 70s jazz pianists often found in the playing of Oscar Peterson, Red Garland, and
Wynton Kelly among others.
The first example is a basic form with roots in the bass and shells in the right hand. The second
example will expand the harmony with common chord substitutions. And the third example shows how
to do rootless voicings in the left hand.

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Bass Lines

This more embellished example shows a sample bass line in the style of Ray Brown. I have shown
simple shells in the right hand. Experiment with various comping rhythms in the right hand.

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Rootless Voicings

This next example show how to do rootless voicings for the left hand. This frees up your right hand to
play melodies and blues lines.

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The Blues Scales

To construct blues licks we take the following pentatonic scales.

Figure 1: C Major Pentatonic Scale

Figure 2: C Minor Pentatonic Scale

The common blues inflections we find in these scales yields the classic blues scale. The flat 3 in the
major scale and the flat 5 in the minor scale. But in practice often any whole step in the scale can fit the
half step between them.

Figure 3: Major Blues Scale

Figure 4: Minor Blues Scale

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4 Standard Blues Licks

This lick shows double stops.

The lick goes up chromatically from the flat 3rd to the 5th. It then encloses the major 3rd to finish it.

This lick goes into triplets and then back to swung 8ths.

This lick features double stops on the minor blues scale and then flips back to the major 3rd. Often
players will switch between the major and minor forms of the blues scales.

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