Wes’ Blues Insight
Wes Montgomery wrote the blues his own way — and it sounds nothing like a scale. One chorus at a time, this is his blues seen through the fretboard logic that made him Wes.
Not transcription. Not imitation. The structure underneath the sound, made learnable.
Most players learn the blues scale. Wes didn’t play the blues scale.
He played the blues as sound — voice-led, diagonal, harmonically alive.
His own compositions are where you hear it in the most distilled form —
not a 12-bar cliché, but melody and harmony
moving together across the neck.
Wes’ Blues Insight takes his own blues tunes and opens them one chorus at a time —
so you can see exactly how the line is built, where it lands,
and why it sounds like Wes and not like a pattern.
This is the same Wes Line, Django Line, and diagonal voice-leading from the FDA system —
applied to the blues, where it matters most.
Three tunes. Three sides of Wes’s blues.
Cariba = the Sound · The Thumb = the Line · Fried Pies = the Voice · West Coast Blues = the capstone.
1. Cariba (B♭) · The Sound
The blues as color, not scale.
Cariba shows how Wes builds a blues around sound — the tension between major and minor thirds, the harmonic frame that makes a line feel like the blues before a single “blue note” is played.
2. The Thumb (G) · The Line
Once you hear the sound, you build the line.
The Thumb is a riff-and-groove blues where Wes’s diagonal movement drives the whole tune — a masterclass in connecting the changes instead of parking in a box.
3. Fried Pies (F) · The Voice
Same materials, personal voice.
One of Wes’s signature blues heads — Fried Pies is where phrasing and motivic development turn structure into your voice, not a copy of his.
The Centerpiece · West Coast Blues (bundle only)
Wes’s 3/4 jazz-waltz blues — the tune that ties Sound, Line, and Voice into one.
West Coast Blues is included only in the bundle: one chorus transcribed and broken down, the capstone of the whole series.
What’s in each Insight
Every $19 Insight is a complete one-chorus study — the same format as the Jazz Icon series:
Full PDF (standard notation + TAB)
Wes-style chord-melody arrangement
Full 1-chorus (2-choruses for blues) solo transcription
10–15 min breakdown video
Analysis of guide tones, voice-leading, and diagonal phrasing
This is not a transcription site.
This is interpretation, logic, and application.
The reason this system works at a practical level is that it's built on a small number of structural modules — the Wes Line, the Django Line, Shell Voicings, Drop 2 — that interact with each other in consistent, learnable ways. You're not accumulating licks. You're developing a way of reading the fretboard. Once the reading is clear, the lines follow from it naturally.
Who This Is For
This series is designed for guitarists who:
Are tired of running the pentatonic scale and hearing “blues scale”
Want to know why Wes’s blues lines sound the way they do
Learn better through structure, voice-leading, and harmonic logic than through licks
Already feel the FDA system and want it applied to the blues
If that’s you,
start with one chorus.
Wes didn’t just play notes.
He played the shape of harmony itself.
Now you can too.
Jazz Icon Series - Wes’ Blues Insight
Wes’ Blues Insight opens Wes’s own blues tunes one chorus at a time — Cariba for the sound, The Thumb for the line, Fried Pies for the voice, and West Coast Blues, the bundle-only capstone.
Start with one tune. Or take all four.
A one-chorus study of Wes Montgomery's "Cariba" (Bb): a full chord-melody arrangement, a one-chorus solo transcription, and a 10-15 minute breakdown of the diagonal phrasing and voice-leading that make it sound like Wes. Taught through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA).
A one-chorus study of Wes Montgomery's "The Thumb" (G): a full chord-melody arrangement, a one-chorus solo transcription, and a 10-15 minute breakdown of the diagonal phrasing and voice-leading that make it sound like Wes. Taught through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA).
A one-chorus study of Wes Montgomery's "Fried Pies" (F): a full chord-melody arrangement, a one-chorus solo transcription, and a 10-15 minute breakdown of the diagonal phrasing and voice-leading that make it sound like Wes. Taught through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA).
All three Wes' Blues Insight studies - Cariba, The Thumb, and Fried Pies - plus West Coast Blues, Wes's 3/4 jazz-waltz blues, included only in the bundle. Four one-chorus studies: chord-melody, solo transcription, and a 10-15 minute breakdown for each. Taught through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA).