Here is a recording of me talking about and demonstrating the beginning of the process that I went through when writing my own blues piece.
The blues head you can hear in the recording was a result of me using different riffs and adapting them throughout the 12 bars to create a melodic contrast and keep it interesting, both to play and to listen to.
Above is the first draft of my Blues head that I wrote out.
Below is the first recording of me improvising over my blues composition –
Reflecting on this recording, some things I need to work on is keeping tempo solid as well as keeping my left hand more relaxed and playing the notes consistently in time. However with more practice and with a band, over time this could become really tight.
Following some feedback from my tutors, I could add some grace notes into the head in the future as well as experimenting with different patterns in each block of 12 bars, for example within the first set I could experiment mainly with the blues scale whereas in the second 12 bars I could use more arpeggios.
Changing the speed that I am playing in different blocks of 12 bars could also be an option.
For my final performance, I am planning to play within a jazz trio. Therefore, hopefully they will solo at times on the tracks that we’ll be playing.
If so, I will have to practice comping so that I can support their soloing by filling in the gaps and complimenting the solos. Below is my first attempt at comping.
After working on my blues piece in a couple of piano lessons, I changed the structure of my 4 bar ending. The original was a standard structure of chord 5 – chord 4 – chord 1 – chord 5
However I changed this structure to the one that can be seen in the picture below.
The 4 bars are instead split into One bar of D minor, one bar of G major One bar of C and A minor together and a final bar of D minor and G together. To explain this better see below:
1 2 3 4
Dm – G – C Am – Dm G
Here is a video of me explaining how I changed the left hand for my Blues piece with the added turn around. I had a lot of trouble trying to upload it to YouTube so hopefully the link should work.
Here is my final version of my Blues piece, above is a video of me playing the head twice round.
I struggled to name my Blues piece and asked quite a few people if they had any ideas. Finally my teachers jokingly suggested Mactaggarts mood as an idea, which I quite liked, therefore I titled my finished Blues piece Mactaggarts mood.