Tip of the week: Stevie Wonder Style, Part 3

Last time I talked about slide jabs. This time I’ll describe slide bumps.

Let’s say you’re playing in C, and you’ve got the blues scale going:

C (either blow or draw/slide-in)

D sliding up to Eb

F sliding up to F#

G

A sliding up to Bb

D and A aren’t part of the classic 6-note blues scale, but they function like chromatic lower neighbors to Eb and Bb.

But who made a law on what you can and can’t add to the blues scale? Check around and you’ll find several different definitions of th blues scale. As long as they contain the three essential “blue notes”, the flat 3 (Eb in the key of C) flat 5 (Gb or F#) and flat 7 (Bb), they deliver the goods.

So you can jab up to a slide-in note by pressing the slide in as you start the note.

You can also play a slide-out note, bump the slide in to visit the slide-in note, and then release the slide and return to the slide-out note.

Stevie does this with all three draw notes in the scale above. He usually follows this with the next note down the scale:

D – Eb- D – C (all in the same hole)

A – Bb – A – G (all in the same hole)

F – Gb – F – Eb

This last one is trickier to play, as you have to move from slide-out F to slide-in Eb one hole to the left.

Try playing around with this, and then listen to Stevie playing tunes like Fingertips (live version), Paulsby, and Square.