Lesson 6: The Mountain, 12-Key Blues

The Mountain

0:00:12 Hey, what's up? It's Cricket Joe. Today we're doing the mountain. I'm from Eternal Crane. What is the mountain? Well, have you ever heard of Machu Picchu in Peru? It's a 15th century Inca citadel on a mountain ridge almost 8,000 feet up in the Andes. It was built around 1450, believed to be an estate of the Inca Emperor Pachacuti. In Quechua, its name means old peak, Huayna Picchu, the peak behind it, the young peak. Music is like a mountain. You get the best views by taking a 360 degree survey. If you only see it on one side, you want to see it on the other side too, because it's beautiful and fantastic. So if you're not already doing this, make the change right now. I'm a 12 key player. Say it to yourself. I'm a 12 key player. I want to see all sides of the mountain. Just like our interfaith path, all faiths reach the same center. All paths up the mountain from whichever side you climb reaches to the same summit. Let's take a 360 degree view.

0:02:07 When we start playing, let's play in all 12 keys. So today we're going to do the mountain. That's 12 keys. We're going to go through the blues. 12 key blues. No backing track. I mean, the backing track is inside your heart and your ears and your mind and your soul. So that's, that's the backing track. I wired it up today. So it's going to tell me what to play. I just woke up. I haven't practiced this morning. We don't practice at Eternal Crane. There's no difference between practicing, performing and playing.

0:02:55 It's all just playing. It's all just being present with sound, music, and vibration. It's communicating. So I don't have to practice before I communicate. So as rusty and cold as these hands are, they're ready to go. So let's go. And each, each key, there's going to be some musicians speaking to us.

C, F, B♭ and E♭ Blues

0:03:26 So I'm just playing C blues. Played a C minor. And that's C diminished. We covered that in the last lesson. Played major. Played a little Dorian. It's going to be hard to read the quotes. Alice Coltrane. The piano is the sunrise and the harp is the sunset. I just built a B flat triad off the flat seven. But the sun is always the sun. And a person is always who he or she will be.

0:04:39 Now that that tritone, F blues. See how I'm finding that tritone? It sounds so nice. Minor three, one. And that F diminished. See how useful? John Coltrane. No road is an easy one. But they all go back to God. I played F major just for a second. You can play F major over blues. Why not? One, five, one. Major. It's a tiny little major. Back to the blues. Add the major for a little bit of color. This is going to go down. Next key's coming. Hear how that tritone rings out, huh? That's nice.

0:06:15 B flat. There's the tritone to you. B flat's not coming super easy this morning. Slow it down. Slow it down. Listen more. Albert Ayler. Music is good for the mind. It's going down. Music's good for the mind. It frees the mind. You just listen. You find out more about yourself.

0:07:30 The appearance, that F sharp. We're in E flat. Keep going. You can always play minor. The blues is like a minor with the tritone. You just play E flat minor and then find the flat five. You're on your way. Pharoah Sanders. Blues. I had to learn to play the blues in all the keys. So I started playing and I started practicing in every key, and I play the blues. See I'm really slowing it down. It's a happy appearance. The blues is quite lovely. It can take almost all 12 notes. It can take all 12 notes. There's a little pattern. Let's try to play that pattern in G sharp blues. Find the minor.

G♯, C♯, F♯ and B Blues

0:09:23 It's a minor inversion. Seven. The appearance. Five. Flat five. Three. One. It's a blues. It's fast and exciting. Sometimes it's slow. McCoy Tyner. Religion is not in the church or the mosque or the synagogue. That's the minor inversions. It's in the person. Flat four. Excuse me. Flat five.

0:10:21 Minor three. One. This note is part of the G sharp minor blues. A flat minor you'd call it. So you can always play blues and minor together. D sharp. We're still moving. Having fun. You just start playing stuff. That's great. And then go back. Repeat your ideas. See how I repeat it in both hands. Invert that minor. Yusef Lateef. I call my music autophysiopsychic. That's the mind or the body and the soul. Physiopsychic. This word means music from one's spiritual, physical, and mental self.

0:11:46 Music from the heart. Play the flat two. While I'm calling this, let's change what I call that. This is a minor third, right? And E is the two of D flat blues. I flattened it. I'm playing D flat blues and I turned it into a three, which is a second. I don't know if that makes sense. You can write me a question if that doesn't make sense. Eternal Crane, I'll answer it. F sharp blues. I'm getting tested. Playing major. If you start playing major, you get overwhelmed. Find your minor third. Find your minor third first. Then find your flat five. Now I found it. Alice Coltrane. At dawn, sit at the Feet of Action. Basically writing this through her words. A little piece for her quote. At eventide, be so big, that sky will learn Sky. This is for Alice Coltrane. I've been listening to her a lot. So for B, let's say you never played B blues. Find your minor first. And then find that flat five. Do it in both hands. I'm learning. I'm learning with you guys.

0:14:13 joEy's going to be learning for a long time. Seven, five, four, three, two, flat seven, one. That's a nice happy appearance. There's a B tritone in there. Gorgeous. It's actually part of B blues scale. John Coltrane. This is hard. It's hard actually. And that's what makes it worth it. Flat four. God breathes through us so completely that we hardly feel it. Yet it is our everything. I'm slowing it down here. You can see I was struggling. Go joEy. We're in E blues. Find minor. Five, four, three, one. This inversion in the left hand. That's from major. Albert Ayler. You must know peace to give peace.

E, A, D and G Blues

0:15:58 And you may be wondering how I'm just playing all these different notes and it doesn't bother me. This one. I meant to play dead. I was off by a black note. We'll just let it let it flow. Say that's what I meant to play. Next opportunity. Next opportunity. You can play the other way. This is a happy appearance. It's basically a raise one. You could build augmented off it. An A blues. There's no time for that.

0:17:04 Try to find the A tritone. And then build a diminished. These are the shapes that live in the blues. There's minor chords. There's diminished chords. Pharoah Sanders. Make little patterns. For me, myself, I always felt like I wasn't really good enough to what I was doing. Playing a lot of these notes. I actually changed the E. Gotta learn every time I listen. We missed it. We had to go back and play that one. Seeing opportunities to learn is the joy of music. D blues. So play D diminished first and then you'll find it. Always like to make a complete journey. A departure, a flight, and then a landing. See how I added that? Second degree, that's from the minor scale. Just playing these. Playing these minor inversions in the left hand. Doing the tritone. One hand. A single hand. Great to do when you're learning. Always learning. So you can always take a hand away. D blues is coming to an end. I'm getting sad. I played major. Now make it blue. So if

0:19:58 you accidentally play a major, make the third minor. And you're pretty much there. And then make the fifth flattened. And you've pretty much found it. A step above. That's an accidental. Doesn't belong in G blues. To play it. This is where I am today. G blues. No need to judge it. As long as I had fun.

Let Yourself Have Fun

0:21:01 G tritone. Nice to end on a tritone. So that's where we are today. I hope you enjoyed that. I think we miss Yusef's quote at the end there. What was that? We have to go back and read Yusef. I'm going to have to do that on my own time. But I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you very much. A couple things I want to say about that. Let yourself have fun. I started just departing from the entire idea. I started to play every key major. A reason why I do that and why we do that as musicians is because we're not as versed in a particular key or scale as we think we are. So we go to a muscle memory that is instant for us. So this is a way to see which opportunities you have to continue to grow as a musician. So I wanted to show you what it's like for me. You don't have to warm up. You don't have to practice. And you can just let it all flow. So my cat has asthma. He's coughing. So I better go take care of my baby twiddle. So feel free to say hi. And I hope to see you next time. Bye bye.