Hi Johnny,
I was going to be upload soon a Tenor Sax Cover to this fun song by The Stray Cats “Stray Cat Strut” and for Tenor Sax I chose to do it in the key of D minor. In my Improvising over this tune in D minor/Blues scale, would Bb as the 6th note of the scale be better used as a passing note? I know the 3rd and 7th and the 2 notes that really define the blues scale and also the 1-b3-4-5-b7 in any minor key, but I was just getting creating and was popping a quick Altissimo Bb and a low Bb in a place or 2 to use an effect of sorts, kind of like a passing note–I thought it sounded pretty cool in this key. The sound of the video I attached seemed kind of shaky on youtube, not sure why.
@Michael – my teacher taught me about using passing notes in improvisation. Once you understand the logic behind the purpose of using passing notes, you have to go away and experiment with them to feel if they work or not for whatever piece you are working on – the whole point of improvising is its completely up to you, if sounds good keep it in. A tip from someone else (Seasoned pro), once you’ve done all the theory and practiced it over and over, then just forget all the theory, put on the backing track and jam along to it. Whatever is buried in your mind should start coming out without thinking about it.
use the full D minor scale; D E F G A Bb C
the 6th is part of the scale.
the chord progression for the song is Dm C Bb A
which is the 1, 7, 6, and 5 of the scale
make sense?
Very cool, thanks Johnny 🙂 Will upload it soon, Karaoke actually had a half-way decent backing track for this one. Their backing track for “Rock This Town” is okay, but it lacks that ‘rockin’ feeling that we get from the original release. The Stray Cats made some great, great music 🙂
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