Why does it have to be different and daring? Why do we need to be as bold as we can?
The best music is played with emotional content. When music is played like that it's never boring, regardless of genre or technical ability. Good music speaks to the listener and touches a part of their soul. If a musician can do that then they're doing their job properly. If they can't then they need to go back to school. The goal of every musician should be to move people with their music and to express their own emotions through that music, not to try and impress people with a 'look at me ma' mentality. That's my view anyway.
I love blues, but really it is a legacy genre. You progress harmonically or rhythmically it becomes jazz, if you progress in timbre or speed it up it becomes funk or rock. I think blues songwriting, the stories told through blues is where things can be progressing and still be "blues"
Last Edited by 20REEDS on Apr 27, 2015 2:04 PM
Isn't the future called contemporary blues? Which is maybe a fusion of styles? Or do you mean a new 'blues' musical vocabulary? Is it possible? How is it possible? Will it still be 'the blues'?
I'm not bored, who says I was bored???
Last Edited by marine1896 on Apr 27, 2015 2:05 PM
The reason things often sound the same isn't the mathematics of playing everything, it's habit and comfort. We gravitate towards what we know, but lets do the math-
If you stick to just playing the 3 notes in the chord (you don't have to) and just play straight quarter notes (boring) and follow the blues progression (again, you don't have to) you have a choice of 3 to the 48th power choices for a melody to fit the progression. (Well I ask my calculator to tell me what that number is it has to tell me using orders of power!) And that's not even counting rhythmic variation, dissonant notes, switching between single notes and chords, effect pedals, or 3/3 time (or 7/4 for that matter. And that's all just within the blues progression. There are other chord progressions.
The problem is just overcoming inertia of the crowd. And simple doesn't mean bad. My best riff uses two holes (5 notes). I play it over and over the whole song. (It's 16 bar and the other parts are in 12, so each time I play it I'm playing it over a different part of the melody). We figured it out by accident when we were having problems getting everyone to stop at the same point!)
There are so many styles to explore in music. If the blues is worn out for you why not try something else ?
The blues is what it is- thats what makes it so interesting for many of us- Its like writing a sonnet or haiku--it has a predictable form-- its how you mold that form that is the challenge
If the form is not interesting to you any longer there are other choices but it doesnt mean the form is stagnant. Just that you have other interests at this point in your musical explorations
i think the blues is evolving just fine!! i have fun with it and am not bored.
obviously harmonica is evolving,and i believe it will continue to do so.
however,i believe the future also hold a harp player that sticks to the big three with little or no overblows and just nails it with phrasing ,tone and panache we haven't thought of yet.
i have hopes for the future!! ---------- www.shakeylee.com
The music WILL morph. Blues is a live thing and reflects the changes in society with every passing year and every artist. What we play today and call Blues would make RJ, Memphis Minnie, Skip James, and others spin in their graves. What we each have is our own interpretation of the old tried and true. The medium is the 12 bars, the I-IV-V, but the content and its interpretation is all us as individuals. This next cd we're getting ready to release has some great funky stuff that is medium slow. And some real surprises. It's what is reflected from our lives, the common everyman's living legacy put in lyrics and set to the blues form. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
"What we play today and call Blues would make RJ, Memphis Minnie, Skip James, and others spin in their graves."
Y'know . . . I wonder if they'd be spinning in their graves, or getting a big smile and tappin' their foot. Sometimes I think we "modern" folks are much more invested in safeguarding the purity of musical styles past than the artists who are regarded as the pioneers.
Just food for thought.
By the way . . . I've really enjoyed the vids you and Jolene have over at T. Crocker's CBG site (especially "Hoodoo Lady"). ---------- Marr's Guitars
Offering custom-built Cigar Box Guitars for the discriminating player of obscure musical unstruments
Nick, don't apologise, you posed a great question and useful thoughts, plus got some interesting responses. It's a meaty, multi-faceted topic.
I think the Blues as a style/genre has a lot of staying power. Its combination of a simple form with great freedom of expression makes it easily accessible to beginners as well as endlessly explorable by experts. There's nothing much more relaxing and plain fun than jamming over a 12 bar blues, and it has become the international musical default form for when strangers from diverse lands or backgrounds sit down to play together for the first time. That's a powerful position for the Blues to be in, and it has happened organically. I think it will endure for a long time to come.
But when it comes to blues harmonica, I agree there is a certain sense of being in a rut. This is just a personal opinion, but I feel that Blues harmonica technique and repertoire has developed little in the decades since the great pioneers like Little Walter, Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Walter Horton etc laid down all those gorgeous sounds and licks we love so much.
Most blues harp players today have not moved on much from what they created, and many probably don't want to. There are exceptional players who come along and create something really new in the Blues genre - Jason Ricci being the shining example. Howard Levy too, though not a blues player per se, has shown thousands of other players there are lots more notes and expressions in the stock 10 hole diatonic than Little Walter ever dreamed of. He can play a very mean and always fascinating blues solo when called on, in any position you can think of!
It's hard to see anyone go much further than Howard on the traditional harp. No doubt there will be some exciting innovators on it in the future, but he seems to have explored virtually every nook and cranny in the Richter 10 hole you could think of. All power to him, we are lucky to have such a genius amongst us on this instrument we love.
But to me, the future will increasingly belong to new forms of harmonica that allow expression that is just not possible on the 19th century Richter model, no matter how much it is embossed, bent and over bent.
Alternate tunings are one simple way to get fresh sounds and licks out of the traditional 20 reed un-valved harp. Just raise the 5 draw a semitone in Country Tuning and suddenly you have a different feeling harp altogether. Paddy Richter is another one-note change that gives big payoffs in terms of melodic capability. That's just the start - there are endless possibilities with alternate tunings that give adventurous players the fresh expression to take them out of the tired old Richter blues cliches if they wish. Some players are going down this route, and inspiring others to dip their toes in the water.
But that takes time and effort to explore, which is not for all. Harmonica tunings are like languages, and it's not easy to learn new ones. The Richter tuning is like English: it got lucky because of historical circumstances (the explosion of worldwide communication in the 20th century) and has become the de-facto international standard tuning; similarly with Solo tuning for chromatics.
Nothing wrong with that, both are excellent tunings. But, like any tunings, they have strengths and weaknesses. I think their stock forms as we know them are close to being 'worked out', like an old gold mine. The gold that has been extracted by great miners of the past can be re-worked into new forms, a twist here and there, but there is not much actual ore left in the mine.
It's hard to continue the analogy, but maybe if I turn to alchemy I can keep the thread going... The alchemists were looking for magical ways to transform base metals into gold. We need a similar magic to transform the gold in those standard harmonica tunings to allow them to do stuff they never could before.
If that can happen in affordable, reliable, great sounding, easy playing harps then I think the future of blues harmonica (and all harmonica) will be bright. New Little Walters will come along and blow blues harp licks you've never heard before, to make your jaw drop. Harmonicanick will find there's lots more fun stuff inside that little harp to stave off the boredom. The revolution is coming, just will take a little time.
Last Edited by Brendan Power on Apr 30, 2015 10:52 PM
@ Rontana, Thank you for the kind words man, Jo loves to hear that as well as me! On the one hand I agree with you. If we look at Muddy say, he was excited to see young people embracing blues based music and calling it rock and roll, Chuck Berry, Etta James, Ike and Tina and others ushered in the "new sound". A little later we heard Steve Miller playing with JLH. Hendrix toured the chitlin circuit with the likes of Albert Collins back in the day. These kind of cross pollinations and inheritances take place all the time. Other hand I try and imagine RJ's face when he hears a latter day version of one of his songs from his heyday.
We were busking some years ago and noticed two young men studying us and having a conversation about 30 feet from us, death metal t-shirts, tats, leather pants, etc. As they approached I was getting ready for a confrontation, when they got close one of them said "Excuse us ma'am, sir, could we please buy a cd? We love what you do!" So perhaps you can just never tell.
Some directions the basic music has been taken leave me cold, but then I think, where did jazz come from? Funk? How many movies, TV series, even commercials, have found a blues theme to be a winner? How did blues in fact originate? Has it ever been just one thing? Because I hear a lot of regional and individual influence depending on where and who and when.
Brendan is right Nick, great topic! ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
Interesting post. Good ideas Brendan! Just regarding the standard tuning on a harmonica, imagine how people imagined and saw possibilities when brass instruments got a valve system and pipes to play chromatic, when diatonic flutes suddenly got more buttons so they could play chromatic etc… Then brass and flutes had been around and played for around 2000 years, before chromatic possibilites where invented.
All musical instruments needs and should be developed with time... All the symphonic instruments took a long time to develop, it was not around late 19th century that the "standard" of a symphonic orchestral instrument was "a finished product".
There is great book to read, "On playing the flute", by Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773), it discuss lots of musical things in baroque music, but also the development of the flute as an instrument. I highly recommend this book for any interested.
My post was got more towards instrumental future/development than musical development, anyway.
Last Edited by FilipJers on May 01, 2015 5:47 AM
I've lately been thinking of the basic Blues progression as a ritual. It is so familiar to us, it's like like a sermon or prayer repeated so often and known so well, we say 'amen' to it instinctively. Like any ritual, performing it can be an unconscious 'going through the motions' hollow and boring affair, - or it can be meaningful and moving. It so depends on what the preacher/performer is putting out there, and what faith or celebration the congregation audience brings to it.
There are lots of innovators out there and I personally need to play more than basic blues to keep myself excited and involved, - but there will always be performers and an audience for 'old time religion' and 'down home blues'.
If your soul and groove-thang aint in it - I say, don't play it. ----------
Last Edited by bonedog569 on May 01, 2015 10:05 AM
I actually think that harmonica in general is in sort of a second (3rd maybe) Renaissance. Music forms change very slowly (hence we see some here saying that funk in blues is modern blues... blues developed in the 40's and 50's, funk in the 60's and 70's.. at best the latest of those was over 40 years old already).
How about we compare it guitar?... SRV was probably the most recent great blues "innovator" in that he had a huge influence on the way the instrument was played (but borrowed heavily from his predecessors on the way). The current real guitar hotshots do little for me and mostly sound like they are wanking on and on (possible exception Trucks who uses melody so well and incorporates some eastern scales etc...) but the hot shots on the blues circuit.. meh....
But harmonica never took the leap forward after Butterfield.. really that guitar did in the 1960's and 1970's. It was not until John Popper came along and really inserted harp as a rock instrument that a jump was made.. one that truly excited players and made them view the instrument in a new way. Along the same time, slowly Levi, Gussow, Ricci and others picked up overblows and Gussow and Ricci incorporated them into "modern blues". With Ricci now having invented really a whole new approach to blues harmonica.. and having a huge influence on a new generation of players. That and the internet (particularly Gussow's free lessons) have made it so the skill of the average player out there.. the bar band harp, i bet, has come up quite a few notches.. and they are expected to do lots of things technically that were not expected 15 or 20 years ago.
These things do not happen very often in the history of instruments... Pastorious did it almost single handedley for bass in the 1970's... parker and coltrane for the sax back in the day, hendrix et al for the guitar in the 1960's
I would say we are in the best of times and there are lots of ways to apply the tools to harmonica that are fresh and new sounding....of course the average player out there sounds good.. but will always be just average.. and our expectations are high.. we can listen to the best from around the world with a poke of a button.. still, these are interesting times, and i mean that positively here!
The blues is like the martial arts. It's basic form and intent hasn't really changed at all over the years. Both are a way of dealing with life's unexpected surprises. Both are artistic forms of self expression in which the elegance lies in the very simplicity of the thing.
One good parry. One good punch. One good kick.
One good response. One good solo. One good lick. ----------
Second Brendan's opinion regarding new style/tunings of harmonicas.
However, blues is emotional and, as such, will probably not evolve forward per se.
Music is a combo of head and heart, intellect and emotion.
Those becoming bored with blues may be evolving more towards intellect and should explore other forms, such as jazz, rather than expect blues to become more intellectual in its musical basis. ---------- The Iceman
I don't understand being bored with blues music. I get bored by music I don't like. I do get bored with the way some individuals try to play blues, but all genres have boring players.
I love blues just fine like it is. When it's played and sung well it's the greatest music in the world for me. It's traditional like folk music is, in its form and harmonics and rhythms, and that's okay with me.
It's the players who bring newness to the music, I think. It's like blues is a frame and the picture is the player. Some may think it's limiting, but I love the frame and I love playing inside it.
I like all kinds of music except pop. I like classical (Mozart, Beethoven, Bach), jazz (Mingus, Monk, Kirk), rock & roll (Presley, Perkins, Berry), rock (Doors, Hendrix, Zombies), gypsy (Tudorache, Haidouks, Bibescu), country (Robbins, Williams, Gibson), gospel (Jackson, Silvertones, Hummingbirds), folk (Pentangle, Baez, Ochs). Don't jump on me; I also like music from the last half century.
What I love, though, and have loved since I was a child is the blues. Blues is in my genes. Blues is not boring.
Badly played blues (i.e., 90 percent of it) is boring. You don't have to be different and daring (sorry, harmonicanick, kudzurunner) to play good blues, you need only to feel it to your very core.
I like, and agree, with much of what The Iceman said. Blues is from the heart, gut and groin. It is not from the head.
Cheers,
wolf kristiansen
Last Edited by wolfkristiansen on May 02, 2015 1:15 AM
Blues was getting down before chords were used when it was modal African field holler etc. and any one who knows the language can sing the blues without a chord,it can get down with or without !!!!!!!
