Diggsblues
1376 posts
Jun 20, 2014
7:26 AM
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Ok read it saying today's.
My observation is that most of
The bands I hear only use a few
Grooves from the large amount available
From the history of traditional blues.
When you give the audience slow, jump and
Shuffle most of the night the average listener
Will get bored.
Emile
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walterharp
1424 posts
Jun 20, 2014
7:32 AM
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trying to stir the pot a little eh Diggs?
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The Iceman
1752 posts
Jun 20, 2014
8:31 AM
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If the band plays these grooves convincingly, have never seen the audience bored.
(Example - Reverend Raven and the Chain Smoking Alter Boys).
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The Iceman
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Diggsblues
1379 posts
Jun 20, 2014
9:03 AM
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Remember we're talking four sets in suburbia not a blues bar. These will work fine in a concert setting but the club owners don't get it and it hurts everyone.
I've lost gigs because people think this is the blues.
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Frank
4574 posts
Jun 20, 2014
9:03 AM
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Right, it ain't the grooves that leave em cold - it is the caliber of musicians presenting them...
Most of us on MBH or playin local gigs are NOT PROS and subsequently the performances are not going to satisfy the voracious appetites of most music lovers wanting to hear TOP SHELF musicianship...
So, if we're expecting to hear Butterfields rhythm section every time we go to see a local band or a member here puts up a sound sample or video, we'll most likely always be left wanting our money back :)
Last Edited by Frank on Jun 20, 2014 9:21 AM
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The Iceman
1753 posts
Jun 20, 2014
9:46 AM
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OK. Didn't know you were referring to the neighborhood bands.
Guess it depends on the talent/commitment of the band members to play well.
I agree that too often the local pub will hire the local boys and they really don't sound that good. May be more a factor of friends/family in the local area supporting their friends at a local bar, though.
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The Iceman
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Frank
4575 posts
Jun 20, 2014
9:59 AM
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And the "honest to God Pros" who do the shit for a living- learn to do things with those fundamental grooves that keep them fun, interesting and worth listening closely to for the audience member.
They learn how not to bore themselves by making the simple sound profound...I think Little Walter played the way he did - so dynamically and with all kinds of little things thrown into his music so as to not bore himself.
The touring Pro is a totally different animal then the local slingers... There are some GREAT local bands though - but they usually have some members who are respected "Real Deal Pros" who have been on the scene forever and at one time or another have gigged with some big name stars :)
Last Edited by Frank on Jun 20, 2014 10:07 AM
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Kingley
3607 posts
Jun 20, 2014
10:24 AM
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Great post and a stellar observation Emile.
I have to kind of agree with you here. When it comes to local pub/bar style weekend warrior type bands. An awful lot of the bands I hear play the same three grooves all night long. They play the same shuffle over and over, when there are a number of shuffles to choose from. The same slow blues groove, when there are myriad ways to play slow blues and also the same with swing. I rarely hear a blues band (with harp anyway) play a two beat, a rhumba (other than in a BB KIng Woke Up This Morning style). Most don't play 8 bar, 13 bar, 16 bar blues, a one chord blues or a cajun style groove for example. Most I hear play the same 7th chords over and over ad nauseam. Why not play 9th's, 13th's, 16th's or augmented chords, etc, etc. Generally speaking they are much more pleasing to the ear than 7th chords all the time. The only real time I hear anything other than a few basic grooves is when they are doing a straight cover of something. One of the things which irritates the beejeezus out of me is the fact that in almost every song they will all take a solo of at least 24 bars for each instrument! Why the hell do they do that!!!! Why not feature certain instruments on certain songs or even do some songs where there isn't any solo at all. That is much more interesting for the listener and the player. Hell yeah I'm with Diggs on this one. Let's bring back proper music which holds the listeners interest and not just regurgitated rubbish over and over.
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Diggsblues
1381 posts
Jun 20, 2014
1:47 PM
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@Kingley it's nice to be understood once in a while. LOL
It's funny in jazz they all approach blues as a Form and not a style.
I think homework is what needs to be done.
I'm luck I've had great players to play with that were
as good if not better than most national acts.
Emile
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bonedog569
914 posts
Jun 23, 2014
9:46 PM
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Blues is about the most simple music in the world - and the hardest to make compelling. It often sounds generic and boring - because without a really good groove and players who have something special to communicate - it is. I don't need to hear every kind of groove and a million chord substitutions - it's just got to move me- and it too often doesn't.
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timeistight
1594 posts
Jun 23, 2014
11:32 PM
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Well, like Hendrix said, "blues is easy to play but hard to feel."
I think many players play it, but can't feel it.
Last Edited by timeistight on Jun 24, 2014 1:56 PM
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Goldbrick
503 posts
Jun 24, 2014
3:39 AM
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You lost gigs , like I and everyone else who sticks to a blues format loses gigs-- its not what the bar owner wants.
The club owner wants the band to sell a couple more drinks and keep the patrons around a while longer.
Being " good" is not as important as playing to the audience. And its not a concert.
There is a huge difference in playing for a blues audience in a blues club or concert setting and Dicks Brew House
I dont care how good you are blues, bluegrass, reggae,klezmer and every other niche music no matter how well played is boring to the average person.
Recently I saw a well respected ( by musicians ) roots artist open up for Willie Nelson.
Great stuff, great musicians in a casino lounge setting. After 3 songs 1/2 the audience was out front smoking.
Every now and then a blind pig gets finds an acorn and my duo gets a blues club, college or contra dance type gig that has an interested audience- those are the gigs that keep you going.
otherwise - sit home and play ( as we often do, rather than play what we dont want) or buck up and play for the money- OOps time to play La Grange again-or is it Mustang sally ? gotta go
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Jim Rumbaugh
1001 posts
Jun 24, 2014
4:29 AM
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I believe in the opening comments, Emile talked about lack of varieties of "grooves", and I am guilty. Even after getting Jimmi Lee's "Every Groove a Bluesman Needs", I have failed to get this across to my own mates in The Harmonica Club. One problem with different grooves is that it is a group effort to put all the parts together. The groove is set by the combination of drums, bass and guitar, and I will not , or can't, tell all three of them what I exactly want.
For vsariety, when calling out tunes I try to refrain from doing 2 shuffles in a row. I try to call out tunes in a different key. And I try to mix up what I call the 4 genre's of music (I know I've said this before)
Blues scale tunes
Major pentatonic scale tunes
minor scale tunes
Traditional melodic tunes (example, "Camptown Races")
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theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
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Michael Rubin
904 posts
Jun 24, 2014
6:16 AM
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Paul Oscher told me the problem with today's blues artist is they play too many grooves. Famous blues artists learned one groove and recorded 20 albums with 200 songs in the same groove. Listening to Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Rice Miller, Jimmy Reed, etc. I can see his point. Find your one groove and play it really well. Or not, just a thought.
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The Iceman
1768 posts
Jun 24, 2014
6:24 AM
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Reminds me of the martial arts quote (Bruce Lee?)...
I don't fear the martial artist that practices 1000 moves, but I am fearful of the martial artist that practices one move 10,000 times.
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The Iceman
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chromaticblues
1581 posts
Jun 24, 2014
7:19 AM
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My Father use to walk to school up hill both ways in a foot of snow in May.
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dougharps
659 posts
Jun 24, 2014
8:10 AM
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Goldbrick's description of the music scene seems to fit my area, too. Most people are not that into live music, and pay minimal attention to performances. They come to socialize and maybe some few come to dance or listen.
There are a few local bands that play primarily blues that can draw a crowd in a bar and that play well. They can only play locally intermittently. They will be overexposed if they gig weekly.
The pay in town is low for local bands because there are so many bands overall. Better money is made when touring within 100 miles or so. There are bands that are good, bands that are OK and put on a decent performance, and bands that should rehearse more and improve before gigging.
The clubs just wants drinkers to come and stay and maybe buy food. There is no club that plays exclusively one genre, and some of the bands in any genre bring in their friends, though they don't play at a high level of musicianship. They may be booked monthly due to bringing their friends. The bottom line for a bar owner is that a band makes more money for them than they spend on the band.
There have always been amateurs who play for the joy of it in any locale. Some are good.
Touring pros are a different category, and the expense of touring and the lack of interest in live music by many these days has caused a cutback in touring acts playing in our area.
Finally, the more you are a fan of music, and the more you know about music performance standards of bands, the higher your expectations are for a band.
Given Diggs ability, I am not surprised that he doesn't enjoy some local band performances. Sometimes I feel the same way, and my musical knowledge is more limited than his.
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Doug S.
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barbequebob
2611 posts
Jun 24, 2014
10:26 AM
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A big problem with blues bands of both traditional as well as "modern" style bands comes down to one HUGE problem, and the main reason is NOT the lead players, but the rhythm section, meaning the drummer and the bass player, and right after that, guitarists who absolutely suck at playing rhythm.
It's not just blues that has that problem, but the truth of the matter is that it's a problem with music of just about EVERY genre you can name. Why? A big part of the problem lies on the shoulders of whoever is the bandleader. From experience, if the bandleader's time sucks, you can rest assured that the rhythm section will often have crappy time and if the rhythm section's time sucks, it makes everyone on that bandstand sound like 100% total dogsh**t and that's putting it in the most polite way possible, and when you have bandleaders, or musicians in general like that, who often allow themselves to get too enamored by the flash of a lead player that they pay little or no attention to what the rhythm section is doing, the band is always gonna a horrible, totally grooveless, completely undanceable snooze fest, and I know this sounds real harsh, but it's a truth I cannot sugar coat for a a nanosecond and over the years, I've seen this same scenario play out hundreds of times.
There are basic grooves, not just in blues, but every genre as well, and the bottom line is what good is it if the band can't play 50 different grooves well if they can't do at least 5-10 REALLY well, and if they can't do that, I just look at them as heavily over glorified jam hacks because in open jams, well played grooves tend to be far more of a problem than crappy solos are and pros all demand you play the groove dead on right and if you're hired by a pro, it's your job to play them right no matter what, even if you hate the living s**t out of it.
As Jim Rumbaugh has unfortunately found out the hard way, is too often those who aren't pros far too often come under the category of "solos first and everything else totally dead last," wich tells you what they pay attention to, which is a mentality that's 100% jam hack and when you're surrounded by musicians with that mentality, you positively counting having a band that flat out sucks no matter what, regardless of what genre it happens to be.
From experience, blues may have changes that are quite simple, the BIGGEST problem is getting the groove down and whenever I hear musicians who say blues is so easy that any a**hole can play it, it raises red flags for me because just about everyone of them who talk this kind of smack usually sucks at it because the very first thing they ALWAYS FAIL TO MASTER is the groove!!!
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Jun 24, 2014 11:52 AM
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Frank
4647 posts
Jun 24, 2014
2:12 PM
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Gary Primich's music always has a great mixture of tunes - he could really deliver a blues tune convincingly ( i think he wrote a lot of his stuff} and his bands were always la sheit :)
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timeistight
1596 posts
Jun 24, 2014
2:29 PM
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@BBQBob: You're absolutely right. That's what the Hendrix quote above means to me: it's the feel a.k.a. groove that's hard to learn.
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tmf714
2615 posts
Jun 24, 2014
2:31 PM
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Gary was a great vocalist as well-my friend Mark Korpi wrote a lot of his songs. He said he sent them to Gary,and Gary would sometimes send thme back with the title changes and some of the lyrics changed to suit Garys personal life at the time.
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1847
1892 posts
Jun 24, 2014
3:21 PM
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because most of it is done by white people.....
with no natural sense of rhythm and two left feet.
that refuse to overcome their, "disability" by learning to count.
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica
"but i play it anyway"
Last Edited by 1847 on Jun 24, 2014 4:44 PM
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Goldbrick
505 posts
Jun 24, 2014
7:46 PM
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Maybe its because I am primarily a drummer but how bout y'all practice with a metronome a couple of times a week.
Backing tracking tend not to work as well as themusic will cover a lot of your timing mistakes. The metronome dont lie
Quickest way to ruin your timing is to play open mics with people who have none
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barbequebob
2616 posts
Jun 25, 2014
10:45 AM
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@1847 -- I've played with musicians of every race imaginable, and tho the big stereotype of white people is that they have no rhythm and blacks have better rhythm, unfortunately the real truth of the matter is that people who have horrible time and obviously horrible rhythm comes from every racein the world you can name.
On the other hand, a quote from jazzman Jackie McLean that I heard while watching a PBS jazz documentary was that "with my eyes closed, I can usually tell if it's a white musician or a black musician because white musicians are more likely to play ahead of the beat and a black musician more likely to play behind the beat." I've been on bandstands, however, where the black musician played ahead and the white one behind, but part of that comes from the musicians you surround yourself with and genres of music you tend to play. If you're playing more rock/rockabilly/country-pop, you're gonna have a greater tendency to play ahead of the beat, and most of those guys have a tendency to phrase off the 1 and the 3, but if you're surrounded by TRULY KNOWLEDGEABLE MUSICIANS experienced in playing blues/soul/r&b/jazz, you're more likely going to play BEHIND the beat, which is the REAL sound of the REAL GROOVE of blues as well as jazz and also reggae as well.
@Goldbrick -- Funny you should mention that backing tracks (and even looping pedals for that matter if you've looped a groove with the time dead on the money) have a tendency to hide one's timing screw ups is just like having a band behind you that has their time dead on the money and GROOVING 24/7/365, which is often far too rare in the majority of open jams all over the world is absolutely THE GOSPEL TRUTH!!!!!!
A little over a year ago, there was someone who started a thread about time and the poster said that when playing along to a recording of kudzunner, he could keep up with him but once that stopped, he noticed he was all over the place and he thought he had what he called "white man's disease," which is essentially what 1847 is talking about and so I told him a hard truth about many harp players who aren't pros a cold, brutal truth is that those who aren't pros, 50-75% of the time, those non pros have time that is often HORRIBLE.
I've also heard so many who say once the band kicks in, they have no problems, but when they have to call off the time, they can't keep the time straight and that says in no certain terms, your time flat out sucks and if you took the time to get that together you'd NEVER gave problems calling off the time.
Goldbrick's last sentence on his above post is also a big reason why you seldom see real pros at most open jams because, truth be told, many of the jammers, regardless of what instrument it is, have absolutely HORRIBLE time and when surrounded by that kind of crap, the music you put out is doomed to be crap and spending time with musicians like that, you never learn much of anything and you get doomed to regress.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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1847
1896 posts
Jun 25, 2014
11:07 AM
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my time is so bad, i don't even own a watch.
maybe you all can chip in and get me a rolex.
can you help a brother out?
i play so far behind the beat..... i think i'm ahead
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica
"but i play it anyway"
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atty1chgo
977 posts
Jun 25, 2014
11:42 AM
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It's the difference between the pros and the amateurs with regard to time. Barbeque Bob is right on.
Check out this video of Brandon Bailey playing with the Sons Of Blues (Billy Branch's band) in Chicago a few years ago. Brandon stepped up, told Nick Charles and Moses Rutues what he wanted, and counted off the time. You would think that Brandon had played with them for years.
Last Edited by atty1chgo on Jun 25, 2014 11:42 AM
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barbequebob
2617 posts
Jun 25, 2014
11:45 AM
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Playing very far behind the beat so that you're almost ahead of the next beat is a classic old school reggae grove ala Bob Marley, Toots & The Maytals and Jimmy Cliff, and that's much farther behind the beat than the classic 50's Chicago blues of guys like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, SBWII, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James and Eddie Taylor.
I've mentioned this before is something a drummer who used to gig with me told me on how to learn how to play behind the beat, which was to get a metronome and change it so that rather than clicking on all 4 beats, it clicks just on the 2 & the 4, which is the back beat and by eliminating the 1 & the 3, you can hear it much more clearly.
I just saw this on Facebook and it shows something you want to avoid doing things many white people tend to do:
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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MP
3237 posts
Jun 25, 2014
12:00 PM
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From Iceman- and I couldn't agree more.
"(Example - Reverend Raven and the Chain Smoking Alter Boys)."
Love those guys!!! They had Madison Slim w/ them back in 2002? I knew Madison from a stint he did in Hi when he was in The Legendary Blues Band taking Portnoys place,
I liked the Alter Boys w/out Slim just fine. Groove City!!
yah just gotta know where to look. :-)
Have a good day, Mark
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Affordable Reed Replacement
Marks Harmonica Tune-up
Click user name MP for contact info
Last Edited by MP on Jun 25, 2014 12:02 PM
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