The New Orleans song St. James Infirmary is a great example of a minor blues tune with some slightly fancy jazz chords included in the mix.
For starters let’s take a look at an instructional video for the song created by French jazz pianist, composer, and teacher Antoine Herve. And don’t worry - although he speaks in French there is English at the bottom of the screen. Herve is a dynamic teacher and a passionate player.
Antoine plays the song in D minor and makes use of the D minor pentatonic scale - D F G A C - in his improvisations. This scale is basic to any blues song - and learning the blues is basic to learning how to improvise. At 2:08 he plays the song in a theme and variation style, at 3:15 he adds a lot of improvisation, at 4:32 he plays it in block chords (thick chords with the melody on top), and at 5:00 he explains what he is doing. All throughout the video he makes use of the melody in his improvisations - a key technique in building a jazz rendition of a song.
The second video is a version of St. James Infirmary performed by Free Range Cats, my jazz and groove band. We do the song in F minor and in the improvised piano solo (which starts at 0:25) I make use of the F minor pentatonic scale - F Ab Bb C Eb - quite liberally. Check it out.
Best, Dan
For starters let’s take a look at an instructional video for the song created by French jazz pianist, composer, and teacher Antoine Herve. And don’t worry - although he speaks in French there is English at the bottom of the screen. Herve is a dynamic teacher and a passionate player.
Antoine plays the song in D minor and makes use of the D minor pentatonic scale - D F G A C - in his improvisations. This scale is basic to any blues song - and learning the blues is basic to learning how to improvise. At 2:08 he plays the song in a theme and variation style, at 3:15 he adds a lot of improvisation, at 4:32 he plays it in block chords (thick chords with the melody on top), and at 5:00 he explains what he is doing. All throughout the video he makes use of the melody in his improvisations - a key technique in building a jazz rendition of a song.
The second video is a version of St. James Infirmary performed by Free Range Cats, my jazz and groove band. We do the song in F minor and in the improvised piano solo (which starts at 0:25) I make use of the F minor pentatonic scale - F Ab Bb C Eb - quite liberally. Check it out.
Best, Dan
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