Tag Archives: kenny burrell blues

Kenny Burrell – How to Make the Blues Sound Outside

You probable know Kenny Burrell from his most famous album Midnight Blue and his playing is almost always full of blues phrases. In this The Kenny Burrell Lesson I am going to discuss a solo off a Jimmy Smith album called standards. In many ways it is quite simple and easy to play but has a very sophisticated layer with how he uses the blues something that we can probably all learn from.

Kenny Burrell and Blues Phrasing

In this video I am going to show you how he uses blues on a standard and also how he does some really surprising things with the notes and really creates and emphasizes some great outside tensions with the blues phrases. Treating almost like an altereation that he can move to and also incorporating the melody to create both tension and release. It might seem really simple but it is actually very clever how he does this.

Some of the examples in this video are a bit long, but Kenny Burrell uses a lot of space and the phrases are often also quite long stretching several bars. One of the things that I talk about again and again as a trademark of a great improvisor.

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