Where did the Blues come from?
1. From African American work songs, spirituals, field hollers; songs that had a certain structure.
2. The Blues are songs about the disappointments, sadness; the pains of living.
3. They are the other side from songs of hope and faith - the Spirituals and Gospel songs.
4. Many many cultures have their own form of music that expresses what the blues express.
5. The Blues started from the rural areas of the deep South.
What is the Blues structure?
1. The structure is in the way the poem is sung and how many beats you count before it ends.
2. The 12 bar blues has three chords: the same ones you hear when a church organist plays them before the choir sings. These are the same chords that have been the basis for most of what is called popular music.
3. Each line of poetry and music has four bars with four beats in each bar. The first line is repeated and the third line closes the idea.
4. Here's the beginning of my "tax-time blues" with the beats underlined in groups of four to the bar.
It's time to pay my taxes and I don't know what to do
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 (beats)
It's time to pay my taxes and I don't know what to do
I think I'm gonna have to sell my Sun-day shoes.
The Blues is also about bending the pitch:
1. The way musicians wail and bend notes a little higher or lower in pitch is called bluing.
2. Bluing notes adds emotion, frees the note from being a fixed sound.
3. In songs the blued notes are sung on vowels. Instrumental musicians blue wherever they feel like it fits.
And the Blues uses minor scales.
1. Remember the Do-Re-Mi tune from the Sound of music? That is a Major scale, which is a pattern of whole and half steps that I will demo in class.
2. Minor scales are alterations of Major scales. Minor scales lower the pitch of the third and one or two other notes to create a different kind of Do-Re -mi sound, a moody, broody, sound. These lowered notes are "blue" notes.
Major and Minor scales are easy to tell apart.
1. When you hear them you know which is which. Major scales are a more open, cheerful sound. Minor scales are darker, and might be considered a sad kind of sound.
Instruments of the Blues
1. Picture this: In the evening, after work, some folks sit out on the porch and play guitar (often homemade), harmonica ( blues harp), maybe a washtub bass. They sang and played songs about the hardships of life.
Listen to Blues legends play and sing: Scroll down to hear Big Mama Thorton sing "Hound Dog."
Blues Legends
Read a conversation with David "Honeyboy" Edwards about his life as a Delta Blues musician. Blues Talkin'
Find out more about the blues at The Blues Classroom.
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