Although John Walden didn't solo you can still hear his blues style through his fill. I think it's interesting how two non-blues players in Bonfiglio and myself have vastly different approaches to playing blues.
This clip is a good example of why I say I'm not a good blues player, my blues playing isn't lick based and will never sound remotely traditional unless I'm trying to be that way.
---------- "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." - Joseph Campbell
i think dude mic'd your amp somewhere in the middle of your solo, or turned you up or something. it isnt bad chris, its you, man. so you werent a good traditional blues player here. bah... your play added a different flavor to the mix and after all, takes all kinds ---------- Kyzer's Travels
Your blues playing is basically all the jazz phrasing and European melodic sensibility you've picked up, played over a blues progression. So in that sense, it's lick based. Just not trad blues lick based.
I would have to disagree this is riff based. It is very melodic compared to most blues stylings, but the note choice is related to the blues as is the rhythm...did you hear the bends and slurs during the last verse of solo (leading into 2:18)? Totally blues playing but not necessarily riffy.
Robert seems more lick based in his approach, but it doesn't grab me nearly as much as the jazzier stuff he was doing on chromatic - but I get why he'd do it that way. He is extremely versatile and trying to compliment the song in a traditional manner.
But I don't here the jazz and European stuff...just lyrically driven blues harp playing using the appropriate scale.
I will be woodshedding the blow bend stuff tonight...I am not sure what is being played, but it is over the one in what sounds like 2nd position - so it ain't your typical 1st position stuff. I'll concede that it probably was a little jazzy/chormatic running up from there into the IV.
It sounds great, Mike. I just don't think you can pretend that jazz players don't work and rework ideas the way that blues players do. Unless they're geniuses like John Coltrane. I thought Chris's playing was sweet. But I was also thinking it sounded a lot like some Brendan Power and some Toots Theilemanns stuff I listen to. This isn't a slam on anyone. I just don't agree that you can say blues guys work themes and stereotypical motifs (which I agree 100% they do), and pretend it isn't happening in other genres.
These clips have been very enjoyable. There's no doubt that Chris is a terrific musician. I also had never heard Bonfiglio, and I enjoyed his chromatic work immensely. His diatonic work, not so much, though it's still solid.
Oh it happens in all genres. In fact, I bet most players on any instrument have motifs they use in nearly every song, if not all the time in every song.
Even someone like Coltrane was recycling scales, riffs, and rhythms all over the place. It is how those ideas are recycled that makes them interesting.
What might be different in blues is that those riffs maybe last most of a key change vs a bar or two, or don't have the rhythmic variety found in other genres.
That is just what I've heard listening to music. Players have trademarks they use over and over. I suppose if they didn't, they wouldn't have their own "voice". ----------
