Product Description
This valuable book is for band musicians who love the exciting sound of riff-driven uptown blues and swing music.
Book and CD – Standard Notation – Tablature
Technical ability: Early intermediate
Application: Hobbyist to professional
This unique collection of forty-eight 12-bar riffs provides some great ideas for spicing up the blues songs your band plays.
In music, a riff is a repeating pattern, often played against a chord or chord progression. Horn riffs played over twelve-bar blues progressions add drive, variety, identity, and excitement to a song.
Examples of riff songs include Now’s the Time by Charlie Parker; In the Mood by Glenn Miller; and Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets.
A twelve-bar riff is a versatile arranging tool, and can be used as a tune head, solo, backing for a solo, or backing behind a singer. Riffs can be worked into most any medium-to uptempo blues song.
Although most riffs are fairly easy to play, and easy to apply to blues progressions, many bands neglect this important aspect of arranging and performance.
For the student, riffs provide excellent practice for sight-reading rhythms. And an emerging blues musician can actually play a 12-bar riff as a solo.
Improvising musicians might use riffs as motifs upon which to base solos. Arrangers are encouraged to develop the riffs into two-or three-part section harmony parts.
It is a superb reference for the jazz and blues song writer, composer, or arranger. Invaluable also for the school stage band or jazz band musician.
Great stuff here with lots of potential for all swing band and blues band musicians.
Companion CD includes all 48 riffs, played on tenor sax with full rhythm backing.
Coil bound for your convenience.
48 Razor-Sharp 12-Bar Blues Riffs for Swing Bands and Blues Bands: Guitar Edition
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Popularity: 1%
November 15th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I’m a professional musician from Germany, and I’ve been teaching guitar for about ten years. My blues instruction (books and DVDs) collection is extensive and contains hundreds of titles.
Larry McCabe’s guitar books are really great and the prices are low for the amount of content offered.
This book contains 48 lines that horns play as fill-ins or backing. Think Blues Brothers here . . . cool stuff!
Blues guitar players sometimes forget that they can, and should, imitate horn players, and that’s where this book comes in. Use these simple licks for solos, backup, intros, etc. to fill up your band sound.
A lot of Larry’s books are for early intermediate. This one can be used by an ambitious near-beginner, but the riffs are also suitable for weekend gigging and professional use.
Rating: 5 / 5
November 15th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
This book is a great starting point for any guitarist and especially for blues guitarists. By learning these riffs and practicing them regularly, you’ll develop an excellent sense of rhythm and timing for when you start learning lead licks. Transpose these riffs to other keys and you’re well on your way to being a solid rhythm guitarist – the bread and butter of any guitar player’s experience. This book is an excellent value – a low-cost way to get your rhythm chops down.
Rating: 5 / 5
November 15th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
48 Razor-sharp 12-Bar Blues riffs is a collection of musical swing blues phrases known as riffs. The riffs are used within the twelve bar blues chord progression. They have been designed to be played either together or separately, to create spontaneous “head arrangements,” and, may be used as themes or background figures. In addition, you can use these riffs in conjunction with 101 Uptown Jazz Chord Progressions and 101 Essential Blues Progressions, also published by this author.
In fact, using all three books would put you on a fast track to playing and creating swing blues and jazz…
Rating: 5 / 5
November 15th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I play the accordion, not the guitar. Never felt like I could even try to play the blues before. But ever since I found this book in my Christmas stocking, things have been different.
Apart from a few pages of thoughtful advice and interesting reference information, the book contains nothing but music. I’m not a particularly talented accordion player, but all the riffs here are easy to play as presented. You are free to create variations that can be as hard as you want to make them. Or you can just play them the way they are. Either way, this book opens doors to hours of music that feels satisfying to play.
The riffs on the CD that comes with the book follow slightly different chord progressions, all but one in the key of B-flat. After being played on the saxophone with accompaniment once, the same 12 measures are repeated with just the accompaniment. If you can get the accompaniment section to repeat over and over–I haven’t yet, but I hear there are ways–you can spend more time developing one riff. Accordion players are lucky because we can play the riffs and accompany ourselves at the same time without using the CD at all.
Even though it says “Guitar Edition” on the cover, it works fine for accordions, too. The more I work from this book, the more I might be tempted to spice up some of those polkas I’ve been playing…
Rating: 5 / 5