Hi everyone,

I've been lurking this website/forum for a while now while watching as many of Pebber's videos as I can. I finally subscribed last week and wanted to publically thank Pebber, and the active members of this forum, for providing free help to people such as myself.

Anyway, in Pebber's latest video on chords (How to Memorize Chords v2) he taught the "Bop Blues." As someone who has never been exposed to jazz, I found this completely new to me and enjoyed it quite a bit. Since I find it tough to memorize things without writing them down, I documented the chord changes a couple days ago. After staring at the changes on paper, I saw they fit well in the key of G-minor so I figured I could use them to practice my picking technique (Pebber told me to work on my scalpel picking) with the G-minor pentatonic form. This morning I had a few minutes and typed it up in guitar pro so that I could loop it while I practice (I'm a tab guy, but I know many of you are not). Attached is PDF file of the changes. The rhythm pattern I chose was just an easy example I used to copy paste to other bars. If anyone doesn't think it totally sucks and is interested in the .gpx file, I'd be happy to send/attach it.

So my first questions to the crowd:
1. Did I notate the changes of bop blues correctly in G-minor?
2. Is practicing my picking technique using G-minor pentatonic acceptable or would I somehow be hindering my technique improvement by practicing it over changes?
3. What other scales would sound good over these changes?

Finally, would any of Pebber's more experienced students care to post some improv over these changes so I can see/hear how it is properly done?

Thanks everyone, and I'm glad to now be part of the crowd!
-Damon, aka 'dlraben'

I'm going to have to write those chords/keys/scales out and study them for awhile or else it won't ever sink in. I think I understand what you've written though and how to go about figuring it out myself now (i.e. manually rediscover the diatonic chords of a scale, then use that info on these changes). I see why G-minor makes no sense now. Awesome information here, thanks!

I typically don't blame others for my mistakes, but I'm actually going to blame guitar pro v6 here for not being able to properly display the '+' character in the chord charts. I fixed the labels manually in bars 11 and 12 to use what guitar pro is able to display (eg. G7(#5)) but I obviously missed bar 4. Sorry about that.

Yes I did, and it was quite helpful. Thank you. Thinking about the diatonic chords for those scales is what enabled me to understand your response. I realize there's tons of things that I don't even know that I don't know yet, but one concept that I didn't realize was that it's ok to switch keys so frequently. In the tab books I've accumulated I rarely see key signatures change more than a few times in a song. That's probably just me not looking closely enough, although I wonder if that's just a product of the genre's I've been focusing on. Anyway, I think I know most of those scale shapes, but probably only cold enough to do one at a time. Unfortunately, I have boatloads more practicing to do to be able to shift scale shapes so quickly to play lead over changes like that. I might need to stick to Bb blues, chromatisized, for a while.

As you've no doubt detected, I'm a total novice in harmony and music theory. Heck, I'm probably a total novice in much more than that. I did some self study with the "compelete idiot's" and "for dummies" series and learned some of the basics, but I hadn't worked out the diatonic chords forms in the minor scales yet. I watched the harmony videos of you instructing a class for a colleague and learned a bit there too (e.g. Imaj7, IImi7, IIImi7, IVmaj7, V7, VImi7, VIImi7(b5) ). But of course, learning that in a class setting and knowing how and when to apply it are two very different things.

Before your response I also hadn't realized that I could treat a 9 or 13 basically as a 7 and then use a table like the one you sent. Perhaps someday soon I'll pick a key and write out the 1,3,5,7,9 tones diatonically and figure out the chord forms. Maybe I'll realize this is useful, or maybe I'll realize it's unnecessary.

If only there were more hours in the day...

PS, I'm going to upgrade starting in September. I'd do it sooner if I could figure out how to pay the difference in payPal.