blues

blues

Blues is a kind of vocal music and instrumental music based on pentatonic scale. Another characteristic of blues is its special harmony. Blues originated from the soul music, hymns, labor songs, shouts and hymns of black slaves in the past. The "voice of blues" and the singing style of Qiying show its western origin.

characteristic

This kind of music has an obvious feature, that is, it uses the form of "one call and one response" similar to Chinese folk folk songs, which is called "call and response" in English. At first, the phrase will give people a sense of tension, crying and helplessness, and then the next phrase will be like comforting and relieving the suffering people. It's like a suffering person crying to God, and then receiving God's comfort and response!

So blues music focuses on self emotional catharsis and originality or improvisation. (I asked William Tang for some phrases, but he told me with a smile that he couldn't remember how the music was played at that time! Because it's impromptu!)

This kind of improvisation gradually evolved into various kinds of music, such as rock and roll, swing, jazz... So blues is also the root of modern pop music.

Blues spirit

The spirit of Blues refers to the free and unrestrained spiritual level. The spirit of blues is only used to summarize such a group of people who are pursuing material wealth in order to enjoy spiritual wealth. They are not only formalists, but also materialists in reality. They pursue the most beautiful part of fashion and introduce it into life, then construct a new concept of life and let it become a new fashion. They are a group of people who pursue trends and then lead them.

To live like erhu with the spirit of hip-hop Blues: to face the miserable life with an optimistic attitude, blues music focuses on self emotional catharsis and originality or improvisation, and hip-hop culture is similar to it, focusing on enjoying the happiness of freedom, while the voice of erhu is very sad. This represents that "to live like erhu with the spirit of hip-hop Blues" quoted Lu Xun That is "the real warrior, dare to face the bleak life.".

The word "Blues" means "Blue Devils", which means low-key, sad and melancholy. As early as 1798, George Coleman wrote a farce called "the blue devil, a farce". In the 19th century, the word was used to mean delirium and police. It's probably older in black American music. Memphis Blues by William Christopher handy of Memphis in 1912 is the earliest written record of this word in music.

lyric

The early blues are often loose narrative songs. The singer tells about his or her personal experience in a cruel reality: lovelorn, the cruelty of police officers, the persecution of white people, and the arduous sun and moon Compared with other music records at that time, many of the earliest Blues records contained indomitable and true lyrics. One of the most extreme examples is Memphis Minnie's into the alley, where the lyrics describe a prostitute having sex with a man in an alley. Such music is called "gut bucket" blues, the name for which comes from a self-made bass instrument that uses an iron bucket to clean the small intestine of a pig, a food often associated with poverty and slavery. Hanging gut Blues generally describes the love and hate, misfortune and hard life between men and women. Hanging gut blues and the rough hotels that generally play such music have given Blues an unpleasant reputation. Devout Christians avoid it, and some preachers even call it sinful. Because its lyrics are generally about the hardship and injustice of life, some people always associate the blues with poverty and oppression. But the lyrics of the blues are not only about hardship, some are also very humorous and obscene.

At the beginning, the blues may have only one paragraph, repeated three times. Now the common structure - one paragraph, repeated once, and then followed by the end of a single paragraph - is developed later.

Some people think that Yoruba myth plays a certain role in the early blues. But most of the blues artists are mainly influenced by Christianity.

Musical form

In the early 20th century, there was no clear definition of the chord of blues, but in the 1930s, 12 Blues became the standard. But in addition to the typical 12 blues, there are 8 blues and 16 blues. The basic 12 stanza Blues reflects the standard 12 bar harmony with a rhythm of 4 / 4 or 2 / 4 beats. The blues chords of 12 blues are generally a group of three different chords played on 12 Blues groups

IIorIVII

IVIVII

VIVIIorV

In this case, the Roman numeral represents the scale of harmonic progression. For example, if you play F major, the chord order is:

FForBbFF

BbBbFF

CBbFForC

In this case, f is harmony and BB is subdominant. It should be noted that in most cases a chord is a seventh chord. In general, the last chord is the main chord of the next chord (in this case, C major).

The lyrics usually end in the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the eleventh bar. The last two bars serve as a transition for the instrumentalist. The chords of these two bars can be very complex, sometimes their chords can not be analyzed. It's almost always based on the strength of the last seven chords.

In melody, blues uses three, five and seven halftones in major. The 12 meter harmonic progression has been used for centuries, while the revolutionary improvement of blues is to use the third, seventh, and even fifth tone in the melody, plus playing the adjacent sound and "tearing sound" (as the lead) directly at the same time. When a classical musician plays a lead, the lead usually appears first, while a blues singer or harmonist will adjust the pitch, while a blues pianist or guitarist will play the two notes at the same time, and then release the lead ahead of time. Blues chords also use minor major minor sevens and major minor Sevens instead of major ones. Occasionally Blues also use minor. There is little difference between the minor of blues and the traditional minor. Occasionally, flat five is used in the main key. Often, the singer or main instrument will play major five in the chord at the same time. In addition, minor Blues generally has 16 bars, rather than 12 bars, and is often influenced by gospel religious music.

The rock rhythm of blues is also a feature of it. Its use strengthens the effect of rhythm and inspiration. Many postwar e-blues and rock music used the simpler of these rhythms. The early bebop was a basic improvisation based on the three notes of a guitar string. The combination of bass and drum creates a Walking Bass like technique that gives the blues its typical feel. The last section of a harmony progression generally shifts to the beginning of the next harmony progression. Rock rhythm is often accompanied by the sound of "do, do, do, do, do" or "Dong, do, do, do, do, do". On the guitar, it can use a simple, continuous bass or step-by-step quartering from a fifth to a seventh, and then go back.

harmony

Blues originated in Africa. At first, it had no chords, just musicians playing a bass note continuously, and singing different Blues scales around the note. After a period of time, blues composers found that they could combine these notes to form a bruse style chord.

The usual Blues mode is to add seven degrees to each chord, just like the hybrid Lydia mode, which sounds like a seven chord product polished by some other chords.

Some common Blues harmonies are listed

Example: i7 (C7 chord in C major)

I7——IV7

repeat

I7——bIII——IV

repeat

Twelve bar impromptu Blues fixed harmony routine

Features: a total of 12 bars, four bars a sentence, each sentence has a different beginning chord, each sentence has a different harmonic rhythm, and finally there is a blue ending in the main chord.

I7——I7——I7——I7

IV7——IV7——I7——I7

V7——IV7——I7——I7

history

Blues has a great influence on American and Western pop music. Ragtime, jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, country music, ordinary pop songs, and even modern classical music all contain or develop from blues. In poetry, the word is often used to describe melancholy. The word "Blues" means "Blue Devils", which means low-key, sad and melancholy. As early as 1798, George Coleman wrote a farce called "the blue devil, a farce". In the 19th century, the word was used to mean delirium and police. It's probably older in black American music. Memphis Blues by William Christopher handy of Memphis in 1912 is the earliest written record of this word in music.

Blues music began in the southern United States in the early 20th century. It is also a mixture of similar forms of Recitation in the church

Chinese PinYin : Lan Diao