Posted on 2025-01-28

Playing An F Blues On Trumpet Or Tenor Sax

In Bb Freddy's Blues starts on a G major.
G major pentatonic is G A B D E. This is your main scale for the whole piece.
Add the minor third for G A Bb B D E. Practice this swinging hard. Change the rhythms. Add triplets.
That throws you right into the seventh, the F. That's both sevenths.
Some people call this the Bebop Dominant or Bebop Major chord.
It's almost impossible to play this without swinging.

Same thing on the C - C D Eb E G A and the seventh is Bb

The Bm7 and the E7 are very similar to the G major.
A rootless GM7 is F# B D (7-3-5) which you can see is an inverted Bm. (B D F#)
The same notes are the 9-5-7 on the E7. It's a cool turnaround and you can do a lot with it but it's not difficult.

The Am7 and D7 emphasize the C, the third of Am7 and 7th or D7.

So play around with this stuff until your ear gets a hold of it and then follow your ear.

Put the iRealpro on 30 repetitions and just play.

Freddy's Blues is a period piece so you should channel your inner Louis Armstrong.

Listen to "West End Blues". Louis does completely different great stuff on that song. Still mostly pentatonic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPCBieSESI

Freddy's Blues is an F blues, the bread and butter of jazz sets. You should get completely comfortable with it.

The iRealpro scripts for Freddy's Blues are available here.

https://hairylarryland.com/jazzbuskers/

Just change the key for your instrument.

Major Pentatonic is always 1 2 3 5 6.
Minor Pentatonic is always 1 3 4 5 b7

C major pentatonic has the same notes as an A minor pentatonic.