Music Teacher - Using the blues to teach brass and aural skills

The blues is often a vehicle for learning about scales and simple chord progressions. Here, Richard Steggall demonstrates its usefulness for developing brass techniques and aural skills

Louis Armstrong provided a masterclass with his recording of ‘West End Blues’ (1928) - © Wikimedia Commons

The blues is a wonderful teaching tool. It’s a joyful way (ironically) to start lessons, especially on brass instruments. If your idea of the blues is a gentleman in the southern states of America sitting on his porch bemoaning the fact that his wife has left him and the rain is falling, then you may wonder what it’s got to do with teaching brass instruments.

Well, we’re not fully capturing the spirituality of the blues created by African Americans in the Deep South in the 1860s, but we are using the form and scales that spread into popular culture in the 1920s and 30s. We’re making our teaching more creative by using the clear framework of a repeated 12-bar pattern. I find up-tempo versions in a major key work best to kick off lessons – think Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’, or ‘Tutti Frutti’ by Little Richard.