Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher Stalworth 4613 Queensland
From its origin in the South, the blues’ simple but expressive forms had become by the 1960s among the most significant influences on the growth of popular music throughout the United States.
Although instrumental accompaniment is almost universal in the blues, the blues is basically a a form that is vocal. Blues tunes are lyrical rather than narrative; blues vocalists are expressing feelings as opposed to telling stories. The emotion expressed is generally one of melancholy or sadness, often due to difficulties in love.
To express this musically, blues performers use vocal techniques including melisma (prolonging just one syllable across several pitches), rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” or bending guitar strings on the neck or using a metal slide or bottleneck to the guitar strings to create a whining, voice-like sound.
Normally the first two and a half measures of each line are committed to the last measure, singing and a half consisting of an instrumental “break” that complements the vocal line, answers, or recurs.
Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher Queensland 4613 Stalworth.
African influences are clear in the blues tonality, the call-and-response pattern of the falsetto break in the vocal style, the repeated refrain structure of the blues stanza, and the imitation of vocal idioms by instruments, notably the guitar and harmonica.
The origins of the blues are poorly documented. Southern black men, most of whom came from the milieu of agricultural workers derived from and mostly played blues.
The first references to blues date back to the 1890s and early 1900s. In 1912 black bandleader W.C. Handy’s composition “Memphis Blues” was released. It became very popular, and then many other Tin Pan Alley tunes entitled blues began to appear.
Jefferson, Blind Lemon [Credit: Archive Pictures]The rural blues grown in three main regions, Georgia and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi. The blues of the Carolinas and Georgia is noted for its clarity of enunciation and regularity of rhythm. Determined by white and ragtime folk music, it is more melodic than the Mississippi and Texas styles.
The Texas blues is defined by high, sharp singing accompanied by supple guitar lines that consist generally of single -string picked arpeggios rather than strummed chords. Blind Lemon Jefferson was the most influential Texas bluesman. Mississippi Delta blues has been the most influential and is the most intense of the three styles. Vocally, it is the most language-like, and the guitar accompaniment is rhythmic and percussive; a slide or bottleneck is regularly used. The Mississippi style is signified by Charley Patton, Eddie (“Son”) House, and Robert Johnson, among others.
Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher Queensland 4613 Stalworth.
Rainey, Ma [Credit: Archive Photos]The first blues records were made in the 1920s by black women for example Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Mamie Smith. These performers were mostly stage vocalists backed by jazz bands; their style is called classic blues.
The World Wars and the Great Depression caused the geographic dispersal of the blues as millions of blacks left the South for the cities of the North. The blues became adjusted to the more advanced urban surroundings. The harmonica that was amplified and the electric guitar created a driving sound of rhythmic and emotional intensity that was great.
Hooker, John Lee [Credit: John Lee Hooker settled in Detroit, and on the West Coast Aaron (“T-Bone”) Walker developed a style later adopted by Riley (“B.B.”) King.
It was Chicago, however, that played the greatest role in the development of urban blues. In the 1920s and ’30s Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, and John Lee (“Sonny Boy”) Williamson were popular Chicago performers.
The blues have affected many other musical styles. Blues and jazz are closely associated; blues elements were employed by such seminal jazzmen as Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong within their music. Rhythm and soul music and blues additionally reveal apparent blues tonalities and forms. The blues have had their biggest influence on rock music.
Blues content was often used by early rock singers such as Elvis Presley. British rock musicians in the 1960s, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, and especially the Rolling Stones, were powerfully affected by the blues, as were such American rock musicians as Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, and the Allman Brothers Band.
Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher Queensland 4613 Stalworth
