BILLY BUTLER’S SWINGING BLUES { THE CROASSROADS

We round this section off with a solo over a 12-bar blues in G, full of Butler’s trademark licks. Note the abundance of triplet rhythms, along with articulation of the underlying harmony with the selection of relevant chord tones and the balance of single notes, double-stops and three-note chord fragments, all blended together to create a cohesive whole. Be aware of the arpeggio tones for each of the three chords, G7: G-B-D-F,

EXAMPLE 4 BUTLER’S SWING

Here we’re looking at a selection of Billy’s swing lines against a I-IV-II-V vamp in C (C6-A7-Dm7-G7). In 4a) and 4b) we see sidestepping, where we move an idea from C up a semitone to Db. This works best if we stick to Major triad ideas (R-3-5) or Major Pentatonic (R-2-3-5-6). This is because our Db functions as the tritone substitute for our V7 chord, in this key, G7, so ideally we’d need to also include the b7th on our Db chord to make this into a Dominant 7th. Sticking to triadic or Pentatonic ideas eliminates the need to change this interval from Major 7th against or I chord (C6 or Cmaj7: B) to a flattened 7th against out bII7 (Db7: Cb). In 4c) we see C Minor Pentatonic against C Major (C-Eb-F-G-Bb). As this has the potential to sound tense your delivery needs to be confident and bold.