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Bluesette

Bluesette is a jazz standard, composed by Toots Thielemans. First recorded by Toots Thielemans in 1961, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became an international hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists.

This course is divided in 10 video-lessons:

  1. Overview
  2.  Melodic analysis
  3. Harmonic analysis
  4. Bass line
  5. Chords scales
  6. The magic formula
  7. The altered dominant chord
  8. Voice-leading the SubV
  9. My reharmonization
  10. My composition based on Bluesette
Did you realize that the first 9 bars use the same harmonic progression as Blues For Alice, Confirmation, and more?

Resources

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19 Responses

  1. Here is my exercise on Bluesette. A little bit late but not too late, I hope..

    2. Hi Dulce! sounds great! watch out the melody is indeed a Gg over the Eb∆!

  2. Hi everybody,

    Here is my version. Thank you for listening, I’m studying the chromatic harmonica.

  7. “I’m curious why for the first secondary dominant (D7) you used a Mixolydian b6 scale based off the melodic minor for the first example, but for each of the other dominants you used a straight mixolydian scale (no b6). Was this intentional or just an inconsistency?

    Also, I think there is a musical typo in the last line (Db7) scale – I believe the G should be a Gb. ”

    1. Hi Alex,

      Great lesson, thanks! One question, the mixolidian #11 is just another name for the Lidian dominant scale, right?
      Thanks,
      Gloria

  8. Hi Alex,

    I try to understand what you say about all of me, and I hear a diatonic scale descending starting from the tonic ? I never check before , cool !

    Julien

    1. Exactly, great voice leading. In the school I’m teaching I asked the students to write a similar line starting on the third of the CMaj7 and then write a melody targeting these guide tones.

  9. Hi Alex,

    I just go trhough the bluesette melodic video analysis … That’s so great to understand and to explain this melody as you do ! Thanks.

    Julien

    1. So glad to hear it’s helpful. It’s all about understanding the music.
      I was teaching today a class in Paris and I showed them the same idea on All Of Me, check it out, look at the first note on each chord, you’ll notice something pretty cool 😉

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