Why I Adore Blues Music And Blues Guitar
// May 4th, 2012 // No Comments » // Music
It’s funny. I never realized it until I got a bit older. But I've always got moved by blues music.
And I believe the reason I never realized it is because I never had the to put on the music I loved.
You see back in the 1960′s when I was truly getting into music they didn't have all the labels that we applied to music today. Back then the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin would play all sorts of music. It was just “Stones Music” or “Zeppelin Music”. Those great bands combined blues with rock and roll and their own musical ideas and feelings. It was only later when I needed to dig into their music more that I started to realize they were listening to old blues musicians for their ideas.
Actually, plenty of the words of Led Zeppelin songs were robbed from old blues songs. Why their massive hit “Whole Lotta Love” pretty much takes the lyrics from Willie Dixon song “You Need Love”. Stealing blues words was not unusual in those days.
But I'm getting off course.
I started to play guitar back in the late 60′s. Back then I was playing all types of music on my guitar. I played Grateful Dead songs, Beatle songs, Rolling Stones songs, and even people rock songs. Every one of them had songs that pulled ideas from the blues. Eventually I became a fulltime blues guitarist and had my private blues bands.
Take The Loving Spoonful. At best they could be portrayed as a folk rock group. Their hits included Summer In The City, Do You Believe In Magic, and Daydream. But one of my fave songs was a blues tune called Sportin Life that was on their first album. It was an old traditional tune and the writer is not known. But I play that song to this very day. Its an element of my ordinary blues inventory.
Just shows that back in the 60′s the groups would play all kinds of music and the blues was a typical thread in numerous bands song list. It took the Blues Brothers to turn the world on to the whole history and way of life of the blues. Thanks to Elwood and Jake for turning us on.
But again I get off track.
What was it about the blues the made me adore it? I've given that some soul searching and here is what I suspect makes The Blues special.
It’s Easy
The musical language of the blues is extremely simple. Sometimes a song is made from only three chords. Plus the chords are played in a very easy pattern, often made of 12 bars. For people that understand the fundamentals of music the chords are the I, IV, and V of the chords of any given key. Those Roman Numbers are shorthand for the 1st chord, sometimes called the root or tonic chord. The 4th chord in the scale often referred to as the subdominant or “4″ chord. And the 5th chord of the scale, often referred to as the dominant or “5″ chord.
It’s Moving
Although the basic scale used in blues is the standard pentatonic scale, most notes are usually played “blue”. By that it suggests some notes are raised a touch to make an interesting tension. This creates the special feeling that all blues music brings. It adds tension and a “moaning” feeling to the track. This is hard to describe in notes a sheet of music, and as in many emotional communications, words don’t seem to do it justice. But anyone who has heard a blues melody knows what I am talking about.
There’s A lot of Kinds
This blues harmonic structure can be applied to many different rhythms. The rhythms can be standard, or cool, or shuffles, or latin in feel. This “groove” outlines whether the blues is from Memphis, West Coast, New Orleans, Kansas City, or Chicago… Or anyplace in between.
But the truth is there is no way to describe why I like the blues. It’s a mixture of many things. The tonality and the rhythms are a part of it but those by themselves can never describe why The Blues moves me. It is just a feeling.
And when you ponder it…
Can we truly describe why you adore a sunset, or being at the shore, or what makes a person beautiful?
No we can't
We just can tell!
Rick Honeyboy Hart is a longtime blues guitar player and online marketer. He likes finding out about the history of the blues and teaches blues guitar and thinks about the days when he had his blues band Honeyboy.




