“Blue Monk” gets called, you walk a line under the head, and then the solo comes around to you. You know the form, because Thelonious Monk wrote it on the form of a B-flat blues. The tough part is finding something to play when the only way you know how to get through a form is to walk a bass line.
Quick answer
Learn the 3-5-7-9 of each chord on a B-flat blues and swing it in eighth notes. Then use the melody: it climbs by half steps from D to F, so surround that F with the half steps above and below it. Then aim your phrases at target notes, like D on B-flat 7 to G on E-flat 7.
This post is about soloing on “Blue Monk.” In my upright soloing course, it’s the tune I use to start on jazz vocabulary. Here are the notes to solo with, the vocabulary in Monk’s melody, and how to aim it at target notes. If you came here for a walking line, there’s a free Blue Monk walking bass line with notation, tab and a play-along on the main site.
What notes do you solo with on Blue Monk?
The 1-3-5-7 is too similar to a bass line. Play it in a solo and it sounds too elementary, because the 1-3-5-7 is actually not what soloists think of when they think of each chord. What they do think of is 3-5-7-9. On B-flat 7, that’s D, F, A-flat and C.
People are taught that extended harmony is advanced. I don’t think that’s true at all. The 9 is the second note of the B-flat major scale, the scale you practice whenever you pick up your instrument. It’s not a scary note you have to pull from somewhere else. And it’s the note that really separates a solo from a bass line. Play it in a bass line and nobody knows what chord you’re playing, because the 9 isn’t an obvious note. That’s what makes it so hip in a solo.
Take the first four bars. Play the 3-5-7-9 in eighth notes, two eighth notes per note. Then swing them, because you can’t play straight eighth notes if you’re trying to play jazz. Then vary it: leave some notes out, change the order, change direction, change the register. You’ve got four notes and eighth notes, and you can do whatever you want with that.
If a note doesn’t sound like it belongs to the chord yet, practice with a drone. I like to sing everything. If I can sing it, it’s in my brain, and then I’ve got a much better chance of playing it. You can throw a root in from time to time, as long as you’re not basing everything on it. You very rarely hear a great soloist start on the downbeat of a bar with the root.
The melody is your first vocabulary
You can make a good solo with the 3-5-7-9, but that isn’t jazz vocabulary yet. Jazz vocabulary is really chromatic language over chord changes. That’s all it is. Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker weren’t thinking, “I’m going to play the sharp 11, then I’m going to play the 13.” They were thinking chromatically, which means every note has two chromatic notes you can play: the note above it and the note below it.
The head to “Blue Monk” shows you how. The first phrase starts on D and goes up by half steps to F. Then on the E-flat 7, it starts on G and goes up chromatically to B-flat. Notice that it starts on the third. If the head started on the root, it would be a very boring melody. Starting on the third gives it some character.
The third phrase starts on the fifth, F, goes up to G, the 13, and then kind of walks down. Not everything has to be expressed in terms of theory. The point is that it’s chromatic, and chromatic language by its very nature is swinging. It has movement, a natural forward motion, so it swings even when you’re not trying to swing.
How do you turn the first Blue Monk phrase into new vocabulary?
Now take that first phrase and change it. Invert it. Keep the rhythm and change the notes. Or pick the F as the note you want to get to, play the half step below it and the half step above it, and then land on it. You’ll hear that called an enclosure, and I think the term is kind of irrelevant, because an enclosure is really just a half step. You get the tension, and then when you land on the F, it’s a nice release.
Then make it longer. Play the half step below the F and then a whole step above it, and you’ve got a five-note phrase. Go a minor third above the F and it’s six. You can add notes, skip around the target note, or avoid it altogether. This isn’t a beginner or intermediate form of jazz vocabulary. This is the vocabulary, because that’s how the vocabulary was created.
People say bebop is a language, and I don’t think that’s necessarily accurate. In a language, you use the words you have. You can’t make up new English words and pass that off as conversation. In jazz, you have phrases that resemble language, but the beauty of it is you get to do whatever you want with those phrases.
When you have a phrase like Blue Monk, you integrate it into your vocabulary by just messing around with it. And that’s how you form a vocabulary.
Cole Davis
How do you know when it’s good? You know. You play something, you like it, and you remember it. To really develop a vocabulary, you have to do this a lot: improvise on the melody, keep the things you like and throw away the things you don’t. That’s where jazz vocabulary comes from.
Aim the half steps at target notes
Random half steps over everything start to sound like “Flight of the Bumblebee,” not jazz vocabulary. A lot of the problem with vocabulary is that we’re a little aimless. We understand the concept, but we might not have a clear idea of where we’re starting and where we’re going. Target notes are a great way to deal with that.
Start easy. Begin on a D on the B-flat 7 and end up on a G on the E-flat 7. In between, use notes from the 3-5-7-9, because you have to outline the changes somehow, even when you’re playing chromatically, and put half steps around them. Then try a tougher one: start on D and end up on the C-sharp on the E-flat 7 (that’s D-flat, the seventh). The flat 9 works great on each dominant chord too. To practice it, play 3, 5, 7, flat 9 on each chord. On a minor 7 chord, play the regular 9.
Listen for one more color in bar 6. The melody goes up to the seventh there, and the chord under it can be E-flat 7 or E diminished. Both sound good. Only one note is different between E diminished and E-flat 7: the root. Some people call that note the flat 9. I don’t even look at it as a flat 9. I look at it as a diminished chord, and Monk is implying it there. He clearly intended it to sound that way, and there are many recordings of him playing it like that. The same sound works on B-flat 7: play B diminished over it.
Practice it today
- The 3-5-7-9. Play it over the first four bars in eighth notes, then swing it, then leave notes out and change the order.
- The first two phrases. Play D up by half steps to F, then G up by half steps to B-flat on the E-flat 7.
- Surround the F. Half step below, half step above, then land on it. Then stretch it to five notes and six.
- Pick targets. Start on D on the B-flat 7 and land on G on the E-flat 7, outlining the chord on the way.
- Keep what you like. When something surprises you, remember it and practice it.
All of this comes from Jazz Soloing on Upright Bass: From the Beginning. The PDF for that chapter has a B-flat blues with different target notes assigned to beat one of each chord. The first steps of the method are in how to solo on upright bass. The course ends with Charlie Parker doing the same thing to “How High the Moon” when he wrote “Ornithology,” which comes up in my jazz improvisation primer.
Learn the first phrase of “Blue Monk” tonight, then see how many ways you can get to that F.
Go deeper
Jazz Soloing on Upright Bass: From the Beginning
The whole method on video, turning your bass line into a solo step by step, with a PDF for every lesson.
FAQ
Is Blue Monk a blues?
Yes. Thelonious Monk wrote “Blue Monk” on the form of a B-flat blues, so if you’ve been working on a B-flat blues, it’s an appropriate head to play. The melody is a great study in basic, simple jazz vocabulary that you can use in your solo.
Should I solo with the 1-3-5-7 on Blue Monk?
You can, but the 1-3-5-7 is too similar to a bass line, and in a solo it sounds too elementary. Soloists think 3-5-7-9. On B-flat 7 that’s D, F, A-flat and C. The 9 is just the second note of the B-flat major scale, and it’s the note that really separates a solo from a bass line.
How does the Blue Monk melody start?
It starts on D, the third of B-flat 7, and goes up by half steps to F. The next phrase does the same thing on E-flat 7, starting on G and going up chromatically to B-flat. Starting on the third gives the melody some character. If it started on the root, it would be a very boring melody.
What chord is in bar 6 of Blue Monk?
It can be E-flat 7 or E diminished, and both sound good under the melody there. The two chords share every note except the root. I look at it as a diminished chord rather than a flat 9, and Monk is implying it. There are many recordings of him playing it that way.
How do I add half steps to a solo without it sounding random?
Aim them at target notes. Pick where you start and where you land, like a D on the B-flat 7 going to a G on the E-flat 7. Use notes from the 3-5-7-9 to outline the changes, then put half steps around them. Random half steps over everything start to sound like Flight of the Bumblebee.
