12 Bar blues, until you have been to a poorly organised blues jam in Surrey... until you have been to a poorly organised blues jam in Surrey - you do not know the 12 bar blues, my friend.
The twelve bar blues is a formula for slow people thinking, described by the chords of the Nashville system. When it's done badly - it can be done well and I like blues music but when it's done bad it's like a formula that's writ large. Here, I'll describe a standard 12 bar a bar per line.
I) Lawd gawd ahm so unheppy.
I) something bad heppened to me
I) Lawd gawd ahm so unheppy.
I) something bad heppened to me
IV) ah could do something
IV about it
I) but then I wouldn't have
I) no misery
V) I could cheer myself up
IV) with some blueberry pie
I) but ahm so unheppy
I) and there'd be nothing for the next verse.
rinse - repeat until someone comes up and murders that song by The Meters. The thing to learn from this is the sound of the root chord, the fourth chord, the fifth chord and the pulls they lend to the music.
A great game to play is trying to work out what bar someone is on based on those sounds, so duck out of the pub and come back in again.. bar 11 is a rallying point where the musicians wake and know to get back to the beginning or maybe if we're really lucky stop.
No comments:
Post a Comment