4 bars Oscar Peterson adds to C Jam Blues

Reader,

On C Jam Blues, the Oscar Peterson Trio plays something I want you to hear.

They extend the 12-bar blues form to 16 bars by adding 4 bars of stop time at the end. The band hits once, then drops out completely, leaving Oscar to fill the silence with a 4-bar blues phrase that drives back to the top of the form.

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Oscar does this for the first time at 3:05, after the head.

Stop time is when the rhythm section plays unison hits and drops out, leaving the soloist to play over silence. It's a planned arranging choice that creates an abrupt shift in the rhythm.

What he plays in those 4 bars uses everything we've been working on the past few weeks:

• Minor blues scale + chord tones
• 8th notes vs. 8th note triplets
• Blues phrasing (musical sentences)
• Decorating with embellishments

Today, we're putting all of that to work by analyzing how Oscar Peterson fills stop time on C Jam Blues.

Friday Masterclass: We'll break down these fills live, play through them together, and extract the core building blocks you can use in your own stop time fills, or anywhere else in your blues solos.

You are already on the list.

See you Friday, Feb 6th, at 1:00 Eastern.

Try This Before Friday

I’ve transcribed 4 of Oscar’s stop time fills from this performance

Your job:

1. Play them for yourself
2. Identify the techniques we’ve been practicing:
3. Notice what’s the same or different from your own lines
4. Let his phrasing inspire something new in your playing

Happy practicing!

Josh