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#31
03-16-2013, 01:48 PM
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 nonsense...you think John Lee Hooker had top skills ?If you can play what you feel with musical palette available...you'll be fine.
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There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major... Sergei Prokofiev 
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#32
03-17-2013, 06:29 AM
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A: None. They just sit there in the dark and complain. I said none, lawd lawd, they jest sit there in the dark and complain, "Lightbulb, you better change yo'self, or I'm leavin' on that southbound train."
__________________
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen.
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#33
03-17-2013, 07:53 AM
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Druim lochmaighe
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#34
03-17-2013, 07:57 AM
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Been there done all that but still only an average blues player !
__________________
Thank you to the oil industry that has allowed me to own lots of fantastic guitars
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#36
03-17-2013, 08:41 AM
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 The players who break the barriers are usually exceptionally gifted in many ways -- but even so they still get compared to the "originals" decades after. Some genres, like heavy metal, are less "rooted". But other genres, like blues and country, are more associated with a certain "vibe". For better or worse, that vibe is driven by the music -- but also by the visual aspect. As for myself, I can play a few bluesy licks and be satisfied -- but when I hear a "real" blues player, I am quickly reminded of what the real deal sounds like.
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#37
03-17-2013, 08:51 AM
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1. 12-bar progression
2. pentatonic and blues scale 3. string bending 4. rhythm (shuffles, walking bass lines, etc) 5. fills and turnarounds
__________________
Fingerstyle Guitar & One-Man Band www.SteveHungMusic.com Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok @SteveHungMusic http://stevehung.bandcamp.com
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#38
03-17-2013, 08:52 AM
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My folks always watch variety shows that feature surgically modified artists from mainland China bending over backward acting like Americans. It is an artistically questionable and visually horrific experience at best.
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#39
03-17-2013, 08:59 AM
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I can play most standard blues as well but in my hands it sounds more like "blues rock"... Back to the OP, the best way to learn and play the blues is to do it like the originals did -- by ear. Definitely leave modes in the closet.
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#40
03-17-2013, 09:01 AM
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__________________
There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major... Sergei Prokofiev
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#41
03-17-2013, 09:21 AM
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Last edited by mc1; 03-17-2013 at 09:55 AM.
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#42
03-17-2013, 10:36 AM
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I do believe in appreciating everything the world has to offer -- while staying true to your roots. And I am not arguing -- simply describing the world as I see it.
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#44
03-17-2013, 12:43 PM
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AFAIK, there is no (or very little, or inconclusive) evidence to support this, and plenty to support other interpretations of supreme skill. Such people may be "different" from the rest of us, but they don't have to be born like it. Personally I don't have a problem with using words like "talented" or "gifted", as a shorthand term, but I always associate it with a particular attitude, a capacity for application and enjoyment, that the person just happens to have focussed on music. I don't like the inference that some might be born different in this respect, because it's elitist and discouraging. (If it were shown to be true, that would be a different matter.) Quote:
I can hazard the odd guess about why that might be, but it doesn't matter too much. It's done. But the oldest blues recordings (in fact almost any before the 1960s, and a few after) will always have an unapproachable magic, an effortless power that can only be marvelled at, and copied only feebly. The problem, of course, is in that very worship of a genre that was always evolving, a folk style that changed decade by decade, adapted to the musicians' (and their audiences') circumstances and tastes. Once we start treating blues as a "vintage style", it's pretty much dead. My own view is that blues would have died a natural death in the 1960s, as it began to give way to (or metamorphose into) more urban black styles of a younger generation: soul, funk, etc. It was beginning to lose its appeal for its natural black audience, because it smacked of an embarrassingly unsophisticated rural past - a life that African-Americans wanted to emancipate themselves from. Blues was either a solitary guy bemoaning his lot, or an R&B group playing happy dance music; neither fitted too well with the growing "I'm black and I'm proud!" movement of the 60s. That was all about socio-political solidarity and serious depth. But then, just as Blues was about to collapse from exhaustion and hand the baton over to Funk - white youth grabbed it. Of course, white country musicians had toyed with blues right from the beginning - eg Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, etc - and Elvis's revolution was all about 50s teenagers waking up to blues power (spread by the new medium of TV). But in the 1960s, it got more serious. Rock'n'roll was about having fun. But the British blues revivalists, from Alexis Korner to the Stones, Mayall and Clapton on down, were deadly serious about "authenticity" - as only complete foreigners to a culture can be! A whole lot of 1960s UK teenagers had no idea what blues really meant, they just knew it sounded great, and had to be done right. For them (us!) blues wasn't a living culture, it was a magical genre frozen in those recordings made in Memphis and Chicago. The more mysterious it was, the scratchier the old recordings, the better. Luckily for them (us), blues was - to all intents and purposes - actually dead by then, or at least gasping its last breaths (I mean as a music that meant something important to its host culture). Us Brit blues fans were like Dylan at Woody Guthrie's bedside; consumed with awe and respect, but still eager to steal the inheritance and run with it. Anyway - the point I was trying to make before I began this rant, is that the artists I admire are those who seem to have acquired the attitude of blues, to be taking it on their own personal journey in the same way the old blues greats did. And in the way people like Clapton and SRV manifestly did not do. I mean people like Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits, both of whom I regard as honorary carriers of the flame passed on from Charlie Patton to Howlin' Wolf. CB and TW make the same kind of sense in their world as CP and HW did in theirs. They've drunk the blues potion. "Authenticity" is not the issue, attitude is. Or rather authenticity to oneself, not to a genre of any kind. (Same thing in jazz, btw. Jazz isn't about sharp suits, saxophones and bass fiddles. It's about improvisation. An attitude to music, how to treat it, not the content of the music itself.) Kelly Joe Phelps is another example: someone who seems to apply blues attitude to his own (and other) music, rather than "playing blues" as such. I still remember the first time I heard this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaDbCutnpqQ (just uploaded it myself, surprised it wasn't already on youtube) As my comment has it, sounds to me like the spirit of Robert Johnson or Skip James, the immersion in the song, way his voice blends with the guitar. And yet it's wholly Kelly Joe Phelps - he's not copying anyone here.
__________________
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen.
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#45
03-17-2013, 01:14 PM
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So I'll use baseball as an analogy. The first African American major league baseball player, Jackie Robinson, was a star player. He had better chances of breaking the racial barrier than an ordinary player because his talent forced everyone to see beyond his skin colour. In other words, the first African American to play in MLB was unlikely to be a 6-7th inning relief pitcher. He had to be a star. As for being born with musical talent or not, that is a different debate. I will admit to not being intimate with studies of any kind -- but I see every day humans who can barely read a book, and humans who can send other humans into space. We may well have equal rights, equal love, equal everything -- today's world reminds us constantly that we weren't born equal. And musical talent, or whatever name tag is associated with it, is just another component of our differences.
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