Daily Calendar | Introduction to Guitar | Blues and Chord Structures | Fingerstyle and Western Scales | Rock Music - music composition and sound recording | Summative

A backstory of the blues

Exercise: Write descriptions of the rhythmic variations you hear from song to song, both in execution and in musical “feel.” Questions for you to consider: Do you hear a steady, “flat” beat or erratic “explosions”? Do the drums seem just to keep time or do they interact with what else is happening in the song? Does the pattern and intensity of the drumming communicate any type of emotion (anger, happiness, fear, etc.) in each song?

Robert Johnson - come on in my kitchen

“The Panama Limited” by Bukka White

“Mannish Boy” by Muddy Waters

“Da Thrill Is Gone From Here” by Chris Thomas King

The rhythmic elements you just recognized in the songs above have their roots in Africa.

The slave trade that began in the 1600s included many West Africans who brought their musical traditions with them. Because many slaves spoke different languages, they began to communicate through music.Slave owners throughout the Americas tried to ban drumming among their slaves, fearing that slaves were talking to each other, communicating with their spirits, and fomenting rebellion through the drums. Slaves did indeed use drums for communication. In planning the Stono River Rebellion of 1739, slaves used drums to signal to surrounding plantations when the revolt would begin. In the planning stages of the 1791 Haitian Revolution, enslaved Africans used drums to communicate with one another across many plantations.

When drums were banned from plantations, slaves developed ways to imitate the polyrhythms of drumming, using European instruments, household items (spoons, jugs, washboards), and their own bodies—a style that became known as “slapping juba” or “patting juba.”

Juba was the replacement of drumming

On a lonely night in 1903, W.C. Handy, the African American leader of a dance orchestra, got stuck waiting for a train in the hamlet of Tutwiler, Mississippi. With hours to kill and nowhere else to go, Handy fell asleep on a hard wooden bench at the empty depot. When he awoke, a ragged black man was sitting next to him, singing about “goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog” and sliding a knife against the strings of a guitar. The musician repeated the line three times and answered with his instrument. Intrigued, Handy asked what the line meant. It turned out that the tracks of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, which locals called the Yellow Dog, crossed the tracks of the Southern Railroad in the town of Moorehead, where the musician was headed, and he’d put it into a song. It was, Handy later said, “the weirdest music I had ever heard.”

Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music of poor black laborers into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States and, later, Europe and Africa. The musical forms and styles that are now considered the "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose in the same regions during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by and for blacks and whites, respectively.

At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country (HILLBILLY LOVE SONG by Mack Allen 1928)," except for the race of the performer, and even that sometimes was documented incorrectly by record companies. While blues emerged from the culture of African-Americans, blues musicians have since emerged world-wide. Studies have situated the origin of "black" spiritual music inside slaves' exposure to their masters' Hebridean-originated gospels. African-American economist and historian Thomas Sowell also notes that the southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish "redneck" neighbours who sung irish folk blues music like this(history of the blues pt1). However, the findings of Kubik and others also clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression.

The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with the emancipation of the slaves and the transition from slavery to sharecropping and small-scale agricultural production in the southern United States.

Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the slaves. According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine states that "psychologically, socially, and economically, Negroes were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did."

In order to understand the notations and structures we will be using in describing blues music, it's important to know about key signatures and what are the chord progressions worth with which keys.

Let's refresh what we've learned so far about scales and chords. A scale is a series of notes that go in an ascending and descending manner. For every scale (major or minor) there are 7 notes, for example in the key of C the notes are C - D - E - F - G - A - B. The 8th note (in this example will be C) goes back to the root note but an octave higher.

Each note of a scale has a corresponding number from 1 to 7. So for the key of C it will be as follows:

C = 1

D = 2

E = 3

F = 4

G = 5

A = 6

B = 7

In western music in order to make a major triad you will play the 1st + 3rd + 5th notes of a major scale. In our example it is C - E - G, that's the C major chord.

Let's have another example this time using the C minor scale:

C = 1

D = 2

Eb (or D#) = 3

F = 4

G = 5

Ab (or G#) = 6

Bb (or A#) = 7

In order to make a minor triad you will play the 1st + 3rd + 5th notes of a minor scale. In our example it is C - Eb - G, that's the C minor chord.

Sometimes instead of numbers Roman Numerals are used. We go back to our example and use a Roman Numeral for each note in the key of C:

C = I

D = ii

E = iii

F = IV

G = V

A = vi

B = vii (diminished)

Roman numeral I refers to the chord (triad) built on the first note of the C major scale. Roman numeral II refers to the chord built on the second note of the C major scale, and so on.

If you notice, some of the Roman numerals are capitalized while others are not. Uppercase Roman numerals pertain to a major chord, while lowercase Roman numerals pertain to a minor chord. Uppercase Roman numerals with a (+) symbol refer to an augmented chord. Lowercase Roman numerals with a (o) symbol refer to a diminished chord.

That means for the scale of C (key of C) that:

• (I) would be C-E-G
• (ii) would be D-F-A
• (iii) would be E-G-B
• (IV) would be F-A-C

For each key there are 3 chords that are played more than others known as "primary chords." The I - IV - V chords are built from the 1st, 4th and 5th note of a scale (they are also major chords in the key).

Let's take the key of C again as an example, looking at the illustration above, you will notice that note I on the key of C is C, note IV is F and note V is G.

Therefor the I - IV - V chord pattern for the key of C is:

C (note I) = C - E- G (1st + 3rd + 5th note of the C scale)

F (note IV) = F - A - C (1st + 3rd + 5th note of the F scale)

G (note V) = G - B - D (1st + 3rd + 5th note of the G scale)

The other notes (and thus triads/chords) are present though. They are:

Dm (note ii) = D - F - A (1st + minor 3rd + 5th note for D scale)

Em (note iii) = E - G - B (1st + minor 3rd + 5th note for E scale)

Am (note vi) = A - C - E (1st + minor 3rd + 5th note for A scale)

and rarely Bm(dim.) which is note vii = B - D - F (1st + minor 3rd + diminished 5th on B scale)

There are many songs that have been written using the I - IV - V chord pattern, "Home on the Range" is one example. Practice playing the I - IV - V chord pattern for every major key and listen to how it sounds as this might inspire you to come up with a great melody for your song. Remember, the ii, iii and vi are also commonly added to the mix to complete the song.

A basic example of the progression would look like this, using T to indicate the tonic, S for the subdominant, and D for the dominant, and representing one chord per measure:

The tonic is also called the 1-chord, the sub-dominant, the 4-chord, and the dominant, the 5-chord. These three chords are the basis of thousands more pop songs which thus often have a blue sound even without using the classical 12-bar form.

The first line takes 16 quarter note beats (4 measures X 4 beats), as do the remaining two lines (for a total of 48 beats and 12 measures). However, the vocal or lead phrases, though they often come in threes, do not coincide with the above three lines or sections. This overlap between the grouping of the accompaniment and the vocal is part of what creates interest in the twelve bar blues.

Many variations are possible. For instance, the tenth bar can stay in dominant, yielding this:

T T T T (1  1  1  1)

S S T T (4  4  1  1)

D D T T (5  5  1  1)

Seventh chords are often used just before a change, and more changes can be added. A more complicated example might look like this, where "7" indicates a seventh chord:

T S T T7  (1  4  1  5(7th))

S S7 T T7 (4  4(7th)  1  1(7th))

D S T D7  (5  4  1  5(7th))

When the last bar contains the dominant, that bar can be called a turnaround.

Other types of standard blues:

Eight bar blues progressions have more variations than the more rigidly defined twelve bar format. The move to the IV chord usually happens at bar 3 (as opposed to 5 in twelve bar.)

Worried Life Blues (probably the most common eight bar blues progression):

|I |I |IV |IV |

|I |V |I IV |I V |

Key to the Highway (variation with the V at bar 2):

|I |V |IV |IV |

|I |V |I |V |

Walking By Myself (somewhat unorthodox example of the form):

|I |I |I |I |

|V |IV |I |V |

The 50s progression is a chord progression (ie sequence of chords) used in Western popular music. As the name would imply, it was common in the 1950s and early 1960s and is particularly associated with doo-wop.

The progression is:

I vi IV V

for example, C Am F G (in key of C).

As with any other chord progression, there are innumerable possible variations, for example turning the V into a V7, or extended repeats of I vi followed by a single IV V.

Songs Using the Progression

Some examples of well-known songs which use it are:

'Oh Carol' - most associated with Neil Sedaka

'Please Mister Postman' - The Marvelettes / The Beatles

'Stand By Me' - Ben E. King

3 Chord Songs are the outcome of the blues

A three-chord song is a song whose music is built around three chords that are played in a certain sequence. Perhaps the most prevalent type of three-chord song is the simple twelve bar blues used in blues and rock and roll.

Typically, the three chords used are the chords on the tonic, subdominant, and dominant (scale degrees I, IV and V): in the key of C, these would be the C, F and G chords. Sometimes the V7 chord is used instead of V, for greater tension.

Three-chord songs are easy for the listener to remember, which can make them effective in pop music. Some of the most famous songs to use three-chord patterns are "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen and "Wild Thing" by The Troggs. Three-chord songs like these are also easier to learn than other, more complicated songs. Among others, country singer Hank Williams and folk singer Bob Dylan have written large numbers of such songs. Punk music very often features three-chord songs - e.g. Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop

Common progressions used in contemporary popular music

• Twelve-bar blues

• I - vi - IV - V : the 50s progression

• I - V - vi - IV : for example 'Dammit' (Blink-182), 'With or Without You' (U2), 'Let It Be' (The Beatles). This progression uses the same chords as the 50s progression, in a different order. AND THIS

• I - I - IV - V : for example the verse of 'Time of Your Life' by Green Day.

This is an extremely popular progression used extensively in modern music. It is based on the first, fourth, and fifth scale degrees (the tonic, subdominant, and dominant). The I - IV - V (1 - 4 - 5) progression can be used in a 4 bar phrase in a variety of ways:

• I - IV - V - V ........ La Bamba by Richie Valens
• I - I - IV - V ........ Get Off Of My Cloud by The Rolling Stones
• I - IV - I - V ........ The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Tokens
• I - IV - V - IV ......Wild Thing by The Troggs

Standard 3-note chord progressions: summarize

When referring to a standard Major Chord Progression try to remember:

Major - Minor - Minor - Major - Major - Minor - Diminished

When referring to a standard Minor Chord Progression try to remember:

Minor - Diminished - Major - Minor - Minor - Major - Major

Note: in any major key, the vi (6th chord/triad) is known as the relative minor. So for G that would be Em, for D it would be Bm, for A it would be F#m

Try these:

1. Key of A major-> 3 sharps F, C and G
2. Key of A flat major -> 4 flats B, E, A and D
3. Key of F# major-> 6 sharps F, C, G, D, A, and E

What about applying that to the triads (in guitar - chords) in the keys we've talked about?

In determining the chords, we do the same thing as we've done in the past, where major keys have the structure:

I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi

And minor chords have the structure:

i, ii, III, iv, v, VI, VII

All we do now is insert the appropriate # of sharps or flats for the key.

For example, in the key of D, there are 2 sharps, F# and C#.

The chord progression for D is (ignoring the diminished 7th):

D, Em, Fm, G, A, Bm

Since F and C are sharp, the progression is altered by putting the appropriate sharps in is:

D, Em, F#m, G, A, Bm

For example in the key of F there is 1 flat, Bb

the chord progression for F is (again, ignoring the diminished 7th)

F, Gm, Am, Bb, C, Dm

When it comes to minor keys, you simply take it's relative major, and solve accordingly. To get the corresponding major for, say, Em, you go back 6 notes (or easier forward 3 semitones) - which would be G (whose key has just F#), so for C#m 3 semitones up would be E - so 4 sharps, for Dm it would be F ( so 1 flat), for Am it would be C (no sharps or flats). so for the 'key' of Dm (which is actually the key of F, so Bb) the chord progressions would be

Dm, Em(dim), F, Gm, Am, Bb, C