Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher 4655 Toogoom Queensland
From its origin in the South, the blues’ simple but expressive forms had become by the 1960s one of the most important influences on the development of music that is popular throughout the USA.
Although instrumental accompaniment is virtually worldwide in the blues, the blues is essentially a a type that is vocal. Blues songs are lyrical rather than narrative; blues vocalists are expressing feelings as opposed to telling stories. The emotion expressed is normally one of melancholy or depression, commonly due to difficulties in love.
To express this musically, blues performers use vocal techniques for example melisma (keeping up one syllable across several pitches), rhythmic techniques including 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.
As a musical style, the blues is defined by expressive “microtonal” pitch inflections (blue notes), a three-line textual stanza of the form AAB, and a 12-measure kind. Usually the first two and a half measures of each line are given to the last measure, singing and a half consisting of an instrumental “break” that repeats, answers, or complements the vocal line.
Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher Toogoom 4655 Queensland.
African influences are clear in the blues tonality, the call-and-response pattern of the imitation of vocal idioms by instruments, the falsetto break in the vocal style, and the repeated refrain arrangement of the blues stanza, notably the guitar and harmonica.
The origins of the blues are poorly documented. Blues developed in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–65). Blues derived from and was mostly played by Southern black men, most of whom came from the milieu of agricultural workers.
The first references to blues date s back to the 1890s and early 1900. In 1912 black bandleader W.C. Handy’s composition “Memphis Blues” was released. It became quite popular, and thereafter many other Tin Pan Alley songs entitled blues started to appear.
Jefferson, Blind Lemon [Credit: Archive Pictures]The rural blues developed in Georgia, three main areas and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi. The blues of Georgia and the Carolinas is noted for its clarity of enunciation and regularity of beat. Influenced by white and ragtime folk music, it is more melodic than the Texas and Mississippi styles. Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller were representative of this style.
The Texas blues is defined by high, clear singing accompanied by supple guitar lines that consist usually of single -string picked arpeggios rather than strummed chords. Blind Lemon Jefferson was by far the most influential Texas bluesman. Mississippi Delta blues is the most intense of the three styles and has been the most influential. 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 symbolized by Charley Patton, Eddie (“Son”) House, and Robert Johnson, among others.
Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher Toogoom 4655 Queensland.
Rainey, Ma [Credit: Archive Photos]The first blues recordings were made in the 1920s by black women for example Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Mamie Smith. These performers were primarily stage vocalists backed by jazz bands; their style is referred to as classic blues.
As millions of blacks left the South for the cities of the North the Great Depression and the World Wars caused the geographic dispersal of the blues. The blues became adjusted to the more complex urban surroundings. The electric guitar and the amplified harmonica created a driving sound of great emotional and rhythmic intensity.
Hooker, John Lee [Credit: Frank Driggs Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]Among the cities in which the blues initially took root were Atlanta, Memphis, and St. Louis.
It was Chicago, nonetheless, that played the greatest part in the growth 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. After World War II they were supplanted by a brand new generation of bluesmen that included Muddy Waters, Chester Arthur Burnett (Howlin’ Wolf), Elmore James, Little Walter Jacobs, Buddy Guy, and Koko Taylor.
The blues have affected many other musical styles. Blues and jazz are closely linked; such seminal jazzmen as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton employed blues elements in their music. Rhythm and soul music and blues additionally show obvious blues tonalities and forms. The blues have had their biggest influence on rock music.
Early rock singers like Elvis Presley often used blues material. British rock musicians in the 1960s, especially the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and John Mayall, were strongly affected by the blues, as were such American rock musicians as Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and the Allman Brothers Band.
Acoustic Blues Guitar Teacher Queensland 4655 Toogoom