Minor Blues — chords & grille (gypsy jazz)
Minor Blues by Django Reinhardt — key of G (manouche), form A. Below is the full chord grid; on Haute Gitanerie you can play along with a scrolling chord ribbon, transpose to any key, set the tempo, and switch on a rhythm backing (la pompe) to practise your solos over the changes.
About
Blues en Mineur (Minor Blues) is a Django Reinhardt original, recorded with the Quintette in the 1940s — a minor-blues cousin to Minor Swing, and a rite of passage for the manouche vocabulary.
The sound — a twelve-bar in G minor built on Gm6 and Cm6, with E♭7 and D7 driving the turnaround. Dark, punchy, the D7 pulling hard back to the tonic. Compact but full of bite.
Practising it — drill the G harmonic minor scale and the Gm6, Cm6 arpeggios, then target the 3rd of D7 (F♯) resolving to G. A perfect first minor blues — loop the changes and work your phrasing over just four chords.
Minor Blues chords — the grille
A : | Gm6 | Gm6 | Gm6 | Gm6 | Cm6 | Cm6 | Gm6 | Gm6 | E♭7 | D7 | Gm6 | E♭7 D7 |
Chords used
Also known as : Blues en mineur.
Play along
Open the interactive grille for Minor Blues: loop any section, transpose to any key, set the tempo, and play over a rhythm accompaniment — with a real recorded pompe on featured tunes. In the browser, free.