OK, I used tunetext to produce a playable version of your changes. Here tis:
Bird's blues puzzled me for quite awhile also. There are number of other features of his blues tunes, though, that make them into blues besides their 12 bar length.
The pitches played during a blues melody predominantly use the pitches of the blues scale built on top of a particular root note. This scale uses the root pitch , and the minor 3rd, perfect 4th, flatted 5th, perfect 5th and minor 7th intervals built on that root pitch.
If an F blues is being played, the melodic pitches of the melody are likely to use the pitches F (root),Ab(minor 3rd),Bb(perfect 4th),B(flatted 5th),C(perfect 5th)and Eb (minor 7th). Characteristic melodic motions that you would frequently hear in blues melodies would be alternations between F and Ab, Eb and F, and B and C. When Ab, Eb or B played (the minor 3rd, flatted 5th, and minor 7th) they are bent downward by the improvisor to his taste. These bends down from and slides back to the unaltered pitch are characteristics of blues melodies.
The harmony of a 12 bar blues in its simplest form, would start with a dominant 7th chord built on the root pitch. In an F Blues, that would be F7. The seventh pitch in an F7 chord is Eb, which reinforces and supports the characteristic minor 7th that sounds frequently in a blues melody. In the simplest blues, this F7 would be repeated for 4 measures.
In more sophisticated blues, the second measure might move to Bb7 in an F blues and then move back to F7 for measures two and three. The next paragraph explains what a Bb7 chord does in an F blues tune.
In bars 5 and 6 of a simple 12-bar blues a dominant 7th chord built on the perfect 4th of the blues scale is sounded. In F, that would be a Bb7 chord. The seventh pitch of Bb7 is Ab7, which supports the minor 3rd interval that sounds in an F blues.
Bars 7 and 8 in the simplest blues tend to return to the root 7th chord, which is the F7 in an F blues.
Bars 9 though 12 of a blues vary quite a bit, but frequently visit the dominant 7th built on the perfect 5th, C7 in an F blues, the 7th built on the perfect 4th, and the 7th built on the root. The 12 bar almost always plays the tonic 7th (F7 in an f blues).
Charlie Parker varies the standard blues progression considerably by inserting chords into the sequence to make the harmony move faster, but still holds onto the outline of the standard blues.
He uses an FMA triad instead of F7 to begin the sequence, leaving out the minor 7th and then inserts ii-V sequences that lead to F. I'm guessing the attitude is that an experienced blues player is not going to have any trouble producing a minor 7th sound when he needs it.
In the 4th bar, right before he shifts to Bb7 or (BbMA depending on the changes you're following) he plays the F7 so that your hear the blues signature F7 to Bb7 motion. And he returns to F7 (or F) in bar 7 and returns to F7 towards the end before starting a sequence that leads right back to an F when we start the next chorus.
He makes enough of the harmonic moves that are blues characteristics at the right moments in the 12 bar sequence so that your ear might be willing to stretch and identify the result of his transformed harmony as a blues.
When Parker improvises on Au Privave, his improvised melody follows the chords that he's inserted into the form quite a lot but he plays strong blues ideas whenever he feels like it to give his performance a blue tinge.
There are responses to this message:
Please join our community at SongTrellis. Our contributors welcome your comments, suggestions and requests. As soon as you join the site (or login if you are a member) a response form will appear here.
