'Blues For Alice' (Charlie Parker): Simplest Version of the Progression

[00:00:06]Well, greetings and welcome to Music Magus. I'm  Al Campbell and in this episode, I'm looking at a simplified version of the changes to Blues for  Alice by Mr. Charles Parker. Now, I'm not the sharpest tack in the box, so I need to find the  simplest version of a tune so that I can have a chance of making the changes. So, if that sounds  like your cup of coffee, please stick around.

[00:01:03]It's a tune I've been playing on and off for  about 30 odd years, and it's always a bit of a challenge. Feels like there's a lot of chords  to dance through, but is that really the case?

[00:01:17]So, I've got this drone on in the  background, and what I was doing before I pushed record was just experimenting  with the sound of the the changes against this this drone.

[00:01:38]Some perspectives, you could say that we're  moving through lots of different keys here.

[00:01:43]We're on our way to a tonic D minor,  relative minor of F, which is the main key.

[00:01:56]And here we are on our way to a  tonic C minor. It's a lot of keys you could think of, temporary little resolutions.

[00:02:07]F7 on our way to tonic.

[00:02:15]B flat 7 like a blues resolution.

[00:02:21]One of the few chords in the tune which is  from a standard 12 bar progression. Dominant 7th on the four one uh 1 2 3 4 being B flat  in this key. Then very quickly to four minor, flat 7 dominant, three minor, six dominant, flat  three, flat 6, finally to the two, to the five, to the one.

[00:03:07]So, that's the basic little chord progression.

[00:03:12]Uh, there's lots of different ways to  navigate through it. You could play all the chords as they're written on the chart, but I don't think that's really what  Charlie Parker was doing. The chords are already going down in the rhythm section.  So sometimes he's playing something that you could analyze as being the chord of  the moment in the rhythm section. Often he might be playing the chord early  or late. He might be doing his own little progression. Maybe he's just playing  lyrically of the sound of the key center, which is F. In this case, we looked at the first phrase of the the tune for blues for  Alice. I was checking this out before.

[00:04:14]And that there is landing on the I guess  the fifth of the relative minor D minor. D.

[00:04:34]And we got this sneaky little B natural in there.  There's no B naturals in the key of F. Usually, it's a B flat. So, why is this B natural in  here? Well, one way of looking at it is that he's playing instead of the chord that's written, he's  playing here an E minor chord. It must be that, right? Because we would analyze things  vertically. Must be E minor. Quite often you see a E half diminish written there,  but that's got a B flat in it. and this B note would clash with that. Um, but another  way to look at it is that here we've got D.

[00:05:29]So there's this line going in the door. All day.

[00:05:59]Hey there. Hope you're enjoying the  lesson. Quick intermission to remind you to hit the like or dislike button  if you prefer. Really helps. Cheers.

[00:06:12]So Charlie's or Mr. Parker I should say get a  little informal sometimes. Mr. Parker has got this moving line going there. So we could  analyze it as being E minor but really is it that chord? I think a lot of times probably  there's just an A7 sneaking in there. F for a bit.

[00:06:39]Little A7 D minor and then maybe a two five into  to the four. Often just thought of as being a just F7 for that bar instead of 25.

[00:07:03]So breaking these chord progressions down  that look like they have a lot of chords.

[00:07:08]Sometimes it's about just seeing the essential  chords in the second four bars where it goes B flat 7 to B flat minor. Well, this is  really just standard four minor back to one.

[00:07:27]A minor being a a standard substitution  through the principle of plurality.

[00:07:40]F and A minor. Very similar  sound. It's a minor 7 over F.

[00:07:52]So four minor. You could go back to F or  you could just think of that as a minor and then just down a sneaky semmit  tone. Flat six dominant dominant five dominant.

[00:08:20]Nice.

[00:08:26]these movements.

[00:08:31]Finding the movements where I'm at right now  is harmony and melody are interrelated. But why are we thinking of chords when we're trying  to play lines? Good question, right? Was Charlie Parker thinking of chords all the time? He used  arpeggios, but is he thinking of the chords all the time? Not for my money. And I've thought  about this long and hard. I might be wrong.

[00:09:05]But when we talk about movements within chord  progressions, voice leadings, well, a melodic line, all these notes want to go somewhere. the  notes of F. This note could go D. And so where does this one want to go? D might want to go up  to this D or it might want to continue down D.

[00:09:43]Where does this one go want to go?

[00:09:48]D the principle of the blues. The blues you can  always ram the blues over anywhere. Sometimes you see these solos analyzed and they've  analyzed these blues licks with regard to some altered dominant chord that somehow  playing this that this is a sharp nine.

[00:10:29]So the sharp I mean it is a sharp nine I  guess. But is that what they're thinking?

[00:10:35]Blues minor played over over a  dominant sound or a major sound.

[00:11:00]So Bbop and I think of Bbop in some ways as being  Charlie Parker's music. Bbop has the blues as one of its foundational pillars and  Charlie Parker comes out of the blues.

[00:11:21]So there's so much of this just playing the  sound the lyrical sound of major or minor blues over the sound of a one chord. Sometimes you can  analyze it as being some fancy extensions like musicians like Charlie Parker even though  he was obviously a musical genius. Uh, was he a supercomputer calculating cord  extensions at a million miles an hour? Ly was high on life and God knows what else. Anyway,  that's all I got for today. Thanks for tuning in.