This for me is one lesson of yours that really resonates! Because that proverbial "box" is really hard to break out of until you realize by varying the form & rhythms can set you free? Thank you 🙏🙏🙏
I know the blues inside out, maybe better than my mother (just joking). The definition of the chord structure at the beginning is correct and indeed the foundation of the *blues as incorporated in jazz, rock and other popular styles* . In good jazz teaching books it is called "basic blues". For playing in a band it is useful to have some kind of common structure on which we can apply chord substitutions etc, the usual chord chemistry stuff done in jazz. *However, the original blues is quite a different story* . If you would take a recording of one of those early street performances and apply the required chord structure on in, you would paradoxically have to say it's not a blues. The blues is a kind of music that does not fit in the usual western music, chord usage and tuning system. *The seed, heart and soul of the blues is melodic, not a structure of chords: the use of a scale with blue notes (not playable on piano) creating a mood of melancholy, suffering etc* . I'm not using the term blues scale to avoid confusion with that concept in jazz which is only a far approximation of the true blues scale. However, the influence of the blues on jazz is more important than just the contribution of that chord sequence structure that gave thousands of songs. Just a short explanation of a huge topic.
I'm tempted to distinguish between "a blues" (the song form that Aimee is describing) and The Blues, which is a broad musical culture and sensibility. To your point, I think the idea of locking it to a chord structure is kinda tying it to European musical elements that don't need to be there. There's a rich blues tradition in Mali where a lot of songs sit on one drone-like chord and are defined more by melodic motif (as you described). I think you can play "a blues" in a style that is fairly removed from the musical and cultural ideas of The Blues, you can play The Blues without adhering to the blues song structure, and you can incorporate ideas from The Blues into many other styles of music (thinking a lot of rock, bossa nova, etc).
Many people would describe a song like "Trouble in Mind" as a blues standard, ua-cam.com/video/LsPKW_MnhV8/v-deo.html It certainly does not have the conventional 12-bar structure. But I don't think that's the point that Aimee is trying to make. Oliver Nelson's "Stolen Moments" has nothing like the blues feeling of Lonnie Johnson and Otis Spann (the latter I heard in concert -- I'm that old!). But "Stolen Moments" is a sophisticated, "uptown" evolution of the same 12-bar chord progression that traces back to Robert Johnson, etc. We are asking two different questions.
@@thospe-f8x Aimee describes the harmonic structure of a jazz blues. When I hear an original blues, I hear a blues. When I hear a jazz blues, I hear a blues. I prefer not to mix music with a culture too much, because that often ends in destroying what music is: art. The original blues is a style of music that originated in America, in the black community subjected to slavery and poverty. So it has indeed a cultural context, as most music. Some even say that jazz is a way of living. But because I like old church music, it does not imply that I'm interested in Catholicism. I love Indian raga's, which does not require me to be Hindu. I prefer to focus on music as pure art (avoiding the ambiguous term culture) and therefore use the word *the blues* as a strictly artistic musical term denoting a style (with sub variations). I would call one of those early songs a(n original) blues, mainly technically characterized by the occurrence of the 3 blue notes in a specific scale. The later forms can be called a jazz blues, rock blues, country blues etc, each having their own characteristics. But, honestly, if any of these blueses is played without blue notes and other (non harmonic) stylistic attributes, I think we are broadening up the concept so much that it loses it's identity.
@@matthewgoldberg1461 In jazz, the blues became complex. Many people start asking how to recognize a jazz blues. Aimee shows the correct approach to find this out. I've heard other, less satisfying chord based explanations. But to make the picture complete, it's always good to keep in mind the roots from where all this originated, which involves melodic aspects too.
It's not about the actual chords, but if it's a blues, then functionally what you play or sing will do the same job as the actual chords would have done nevertheless. And of course space and time is malleable, to some degree. It's like porn, you can usually tell
That was fun, thanks Aimee. Having previously watched some of Chase Sanborn's instruction on playing the blues was also helpful in appreciating what makes a blues a blues.
Thank you so much for this! And especially for the wonderful performances you found on UA-cam. So much wonderful musicianship. Their skill and passion is inspiring!
One of the best parts of starting to play music in the 60's was listening and playing a lot of Blues, the real stuff Chess Records, the acoustic Folk Blues , Chicago Blues, the singers, and practicing and jamming to those records. It was basic ear training, learning to play with feel, developing gut feeling for how many bars have gone by, how to accompany others. It was the common music that if someone sat in with our band we knew we could play. It really helped us build a foundation that we used for whatever other music we got into later. You hear some of the great players today say in interview how they studied the old Blues players of the 20's, 30's, 40's and on and how much they learned. As they say study the past and play in the present.
I love to meld the blues with the long 4 b7 3 6 2 5 1 turnarounds, so I mix jazz with blues anyway... this is a very interesting, in depth compositional study to the subject. Well done, Aimee.
I just realized that I actually enjoy hearing your thoughts and feelings about the blues and am now left in a moral quandary about this: blues is not jazz but both intermingle.
Blues is 1)a very special musical feeling caused by b3 b5 and b7 (e.g. Boom Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker or Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf) 2)any twelve bar tune (Blues for Alice/Isotope/Blues on the Corner/Mr.P.C./Cousin Mary) 3)both of them (Doobie Doobie Blues by George Benson and many many more)
Another enjoyable video especially hearing Wayne Shorter's Footprints. Such a fantastic musician. Saw him with Weather Report in 1978 and he's left a deep impression on me.
Fascinating to see different perspectives on things. I would have never thought of the blues as a structural thing, to me it's almost more of a performance style. Basically, in my guitarist brain, blues is made out of blue notes. And if you bend the strings, and play your thirds in between the major third and minor third, and likewise with the sevenths, then Mozart can be performed as bluesy. At any rate, the observation that the jump to IV is the most important part of the 12-bar structure is rather deep, and something I shall meditate upon.
"Blues" gets used two ways: it describes a genre of music, but it's also a musical form, generally 12 bars in length. The blues form really transcends genre: it's used in pretty much every style of popular music you can think of. I even used to play a Nintendo game (River City Ransom) growing up that used a 12-bar blues as its main music. In B major, no less!
Thanks for all this Aimee. I wonder if what constitutes a Blues is in the harmony progression only, or the style? For instance does a Bossa Nova using a Blues progression make that song a Blues? Or.... given there is a Blues progression used in Bossa or Folk or Reggae, is it rather not a 'Blues' or what is very popular today... a Fusion?? So whilst there are Blues chord progressions, yet there are different genres involved? For example, typical Fusions of different genres where the different styles are evident but are blended.... e.g RnB & Neo Soul, or Funk & & Neo Soul, or even RnB & Funk & Neo Soul?! So, is it possible that several songs are not just Blues because of their chord progression, but although incorporating Blues harmonies, there us actually a Fusion involved - which makes a new creation??
I’ve always wondered about Footprints being written in 3/4 as a kind of half time blues. When I originally transcribed it, I notated it as 6/8 for this reason (subdivided into 3 pulses)
i like to show my students that should i stay or should i go is just a blues :p Peg by Steely Dan is also a blues, and with maj7 chords instead of dominant for the I IV and V
I was very surprised to learn that Ginger Bread Boy, by Jimmy Heath, is a sixteen bar blues - a pretty odd sounding one if so. I was also surprised that They're Red Hot by Robert Johnson is NOT a blues. When I play blues, I have nicknames for the three sections - the Theme, the Mirror and the Release. (The Release is the only one that is a genuine term that other people use though.)
Hi Aimee, As a harmonica player, I've intuited what the blues are, I guess, in the style that I play it and the key of harp I reach for. Other musicians have said things to me that I don't quite understand, like if I use a certain key it will be more bluesy. Generally, A and E are my go-to blues keys. I use D sometimes. My friend Larry has a song in his piano he calls Third Rock Blues, it's a great climate change song and it's in DM/ Am. You could probably show me how it's not just the key you're playing in but what the structure does. It's above my theoretical knowledge. I always thought that the blues were a certain approach to the structure of a song, like, sing a line, repeat a line, maybe once more then sing a line that adds meaning or resolves something that the repeated lines lay out. I'm being so basic here but that's just me, the painter who wandered into music... I'll be sending this video, though, to Larry the pianist and Don the guitarist. They know theory better than I do. Some of your music choices are bringing me back to old CBC radio show theme songs.uke that last one, and I think, the Wayne Shorter. CBC radio has great theme tunes. Like the famous Swinging Shepherd Blues by Canada's Moe Hoffman...or maybe you'd say that's not really the blues! Now I'm not sure about the blues. Thank you so much, again. It's a true pleasure, and you have really made my Sunday morning coffee perfectly enhanced. Cheers dave
I love jazz blues. Another cool one is Wes Montgomery's West Coast Blues, which is another waltz with a cool turnaround. Another, that doesn't go to the IV chord, but I know it's a 12 bar blues is Charles Mingus's Nostalgia In Times Square. My new most amazing 16 bar blues is guitarist, Bob DeVos's After Burner. Will burn your face off, LOL. ...... Concerning Wave,. I sometimes quote Wave in my solo over a blues and it sometimes freaks people out. One guy told me he thought he was lost and got nervous that he had forgotten the changes on a blues. Kinda fun 😊. Thanks for the great video, Aimee!!!!
Smokestack Lightening by Howlin Wolf is the quintessential blues and its only one chord, E7. ua-cam.com/video/HTDjD_UdJYs/v-deo.html There are also 2-chord/4-bar blues, 8-bar blues, 9-bar blues, etc. So, there are many harmonic forms. The thing that they all have in common is that African lyrical style of singing or playing a line and then pausing - call and response.
Law Years, Ornette Coleman ? If the chordal underpinnings is removed, can you still have a "blues"? Could the melody and form alone create a blues? I don't know. In this case, we hear A, we hear A, then we hear B for bass. If we imagine C- being able to support first A and F as a possible support for second A, and a G drone as support for the bass solo, do we have a blues? I really do not know.
I would say that the structure is not one of the more important elements of blues, since the structure can be malleable or even nonexistent. (look at "Smokestack Lightning" or quite a few John Lee Hooker songs, which don't have any chord structure or anything resembling AAB) First and foremost is the feel. Everything else is subservient to that. You can follow everything else and still not be playing blues if the feeling isn't there.
A few months ago it hit me in the head that Footprints was a minor blues. Why did it take so long? For me the sound of going to the IV chord is a very distinct sound and when I hear that in the 5th bar my brain automatically listens for the V sound in bar 9. It also helps that a fair number of standards jump to the IV to start the bridge. Maybe that's a good topic suggestion, the distinctive sounds of particular modulations.
You might want to look the way even some bona fide Blues performers such as Freddy King with songs like "Tore Down" that incorporate various extensions into the form, they weren't all strict 12 bars.
One of the questions on a past final exam was a "yes/no" on whether songs were a 12-bar blues. Thelonious Monk's "Bemsha Swing" is one that seems like a blues, but isn't. "Solar" is a 12-bar form, but it's not the blues. "Nostalgia in Times Square" is something I'd call a blues, but with altered chords. "Killer Joe" isn't really a blues, but I've had pro musicians call the A sections blues. "Sweet Georgia Brown" goes to the IV chord on the fifth bar, but it's not really a blues, either. I'm not so sure I could recognize the blues when there's enough harmonic alteration: my ears can handle a little bit, but a "Bird Blues" going briefly into an altered IV chord, then only briefly going back to the I... I pretty much have to count the measures. This killed me once in a jam session. I'd never thought about "Butch and Butch" being a couple... .
Rock musicians like to anchor their harmony using 7ths chords so that they can borrow from the blues. It is an easy way to do it is widely common to discuss 7ths as blues harmonic secret in relation to contemporary rock.
Steely Dan did so many cool things to the blues: "Peg" is really a blues, and "Bodhisattva" has some neat chord changes, too. There's a video out there about the making of _Aja_ -- for those who haven't seen it, it's worth looking for: Donald Fagen talks about his take on the blues.
FWIW, I've been playing what each community calls "blues" now for more than a decade. Nobody I know in the "traditional blues" community thinks there is such a thing as a "minor blues" -- that is a jazzer-only neologism. In its origin, the blues is an all-dominant-seventh-all-the-time genre: minor-7th-flat-5 and dominant-seventh-flat-nine are RIGHT OUT, leave alone the idea that the one-chord might be a minor-7th. At the most, the "traditional blues" community will entertain a "round-the-horn" progression (III7-VI7-II7-V7-I7) in some "old" ragtime songs (note that the "II7" and "III7" chords in these progressions are *not* minor, but straight-up dominant-seventh chords). When I have played in jams with jazzers along with "trad blues" players, I have frequently seen the annoyance in the trad players for the jazzers insistence on shifting to "ii-V" chords where the "original" songs just played "IV-V", or otherwise "decorating" the normal blues progression with out-of-norm chord changes. There are plenty of "traditional songs" that blues players play which violate the rules of the classic 12-bar blues ("St. James' Infirmary", for one), but nobody in the "traditional blues" community calls such songs "blues".
“This Masquerade” kinda feels like a blues. Also, it starts on the tonic, hits the sub-dominant (although one bar early), and the dominant before returning to the tonic. Would this one qualify? Great video! Cheers, Anton, the Netherlands
Just an advanced beginner guitar player. Aprreciate the video. But what gives non blues that bluesy sound? Is it hitting the flat 3 or flat 5 or is it the movement of notes. A solo that comes to mind that sounds bluesy, but I don't thiink it is. Is Steely Dan's Bad Sneakers. Walter Becher's sols sounds bluesy
Aimee, thank you for making this video. You’ve really opened my mind to how the blues has so many more possibilities than what I’ve previously thought. Blues in 3/4. I would have never thought of that. So just to check, Steely Dan. Deacon Blues, not a blues. Chain Lightning, Blues?
"Chasin' the Trane" is (to my ears) a blues The version of "Footprints" on "Miles Smiles" is more 12/8 than anything (though people seem to usually play it in 3/4)
Blues is a feeling not a chord structure such as only 1-4-5 after all there is a history of 1 cord blues if you want to institutionalize blues you may have lost what feeling is
I do regret not talking more about this kind of thing in my video. However, the purpose of my video was just to point out some fun jazz tunes that people might not realize are blueses. Thanks for watching.
Great tune. Goes down a whole step for the second four bars; different turnaround in the last 4. I don't really think of it as a blues, but hey... there aren't exactly police for this.
Aimee, fascinating video. I would just point out that I feel Footprints as 12 bars in 6/4, and one of my fake books indeed notates is that way. The 24-bar notation feels too busy for me. I prefer the lilt of 3+3
Uhh, I'm colour blind, so I get a pass in not recognizing all the Blues. It was a problem with Prince and his Purple Rain. Everybody raises their hands and rocks back and forth...and I rocked forth and back and had a shoulder injury.
I have never heard of this strict I-IV definition of the blues. I have also never heard of the blues being used like a countable noun. e.g. "a blues, two blueses". did I miss that somewhere or is that an Aimee Nolte thing?
hmm. So, John Lee Hooker isn't blues? (many of his songs never hit the 5, and a couple never leave the 1) I'm now curious who made this definition and if it's really broad enough. Have you ever seen John Lee Hooker's music classified as something other than blues?
A great video and a necessary one, but I wonder if it were better called "Can You Recognize *A* Blues"? I can think of some tunes or recordings that are certainly *the* blues, that don't adhere to the formula of *a* blues that you use here (and which I do recognize as a definition of the *form*). For instance, what about a one-chord blues, such as the kind that John Lee Hooker often did (Hobo Blues, e.g., ua-cam.com/video/1kQlRQRGdfQ/v-deo.html). What about the rollin'-and-tumblin' form, which is usually done starting on the IV-chord, the first four bars and the second four having the same form? I have heard (but can't bring an example to mind) some old blues and jazz recordings that go from I immediately to V in bar four and get around to IV later. I would not want to be the one telling Mr. Hooker or, say, Clarence Williams (if they were still around), or any of the others, sorry that's not the blues. (I wonder if there are examples in Jazz of the one-chord blues and the rollin'-and-tumblin' form?)
What about Black and White by Michael Jackson? It follows a 12-bar blues chord sequence but doesn't sound bluesy at all. (at least not to me)... It is a blues or is it not...
Great video (as usual). Hearing is the most important skill and hearing the harmony tells you if it is a blues. #AimeeNolteMusic Could the songs that were not blues be reharmonized to become blues?
I don't know what it is about piano but it's an instrument my ear always has a problem tracking, maybe it has something to do with my ear never got developed with piano music, I can hear guitar bass and piano even horns but piano I can't really hear what chords are playing.
Here's a simple one: How to you think about "Outside woman blues" [Blind Joe Reynolds, then Cream]? No 4 chord whatsoever but with an obvious dominant 5 chord.
Wait, why is this the definition of The Blues™? How is it useful? If I play blues licks over Angel Eyes at a jam, am I gonna get vibed? When I pick a genre distinction, it's either descriptive, or to connect an artist to a "scene". For example, the fans refer to Cardiacs as "pronk": the portmanteau of "prog" and "punk", as well as "pronk" being a funny word, is a good description of Cardiacs' sound. But I'll also call them "prog rock" to connect them to bands like King Crimson because if you're a fan of KC, there's a decent chance you'll like Cardiacs.
No that’s not what I’m saying at all. Playing blues licks, or playing with a blue Z sound, is cool over just about any song. I’m just talking about the form.
I don't like leaving comments... but this is all 'jazz blues'. Blues is in a parallel major minor unless it's a specific 'minor blues', which is the exception and the trickiest to play. If you're looking at functional harmony, it's not blues. 7#9 subs aren't in blues. John Lee Hooker 'Serves Me Right to Suffer', BB's 'Sweet Little Angel' or Howlin Wolf's 'Smokestack lightning' are all blues. Blues for Alice is a Jazz Blues. What do you get when you play blues too quickly? Jazz. Blues has a b7 on every chord, there's no dominant, it has microtones and comes from field hollers in the south, which is why you have a 'chorus' - chorein in Greek is to 'sing'. Stormy Monday is felt by the lyrics, not the chords, not the 'sections' - no one playing blues is going to say 'the subdominant' - it's the 4, 5, 1. Or just the 1. The A A B is in the lyrics, not counted by the bars. It's storytelling. The blues isn't just 'that stuff you find in jazz sometimes' - blues is its own genre. It came before jazz, but it wasn't respectable. You know it when you hear it and if you can't hear it, don't play it. No blues has a 'dominant' because there is no functional western harmony in blues. It's based entirely around the lyrics, NOT the chords. You don't do fancy chord tricks, but the exact opposite which if you don't acknowledge, diminishes respect for guys like Wolf or John Lee who didn't change chords from the 1 (a b7, not major 7). It is not a 'simple form'. That's the illusion and what a mediocre 'blues' player thinks. To hear the parallel major minor, 'blue' notes which aren't the b5 but microtones, drawn from the human voice, as well as the 3:2 or 2:3 polyrhythm feel inserted is how you appreciate blues - complexity made to look simple. It's not simple, and hard to teach. You have to learn it for yourself. It required originality from uneducated musicians who did amazing things without leaning on the ii-V-I crutches, and in general slower tempos. Jazz is great - but jazz blues is still jazz, as in this video. Please understand the difference is a matter of both tradition and respect for the art form. There is a broad variety of blues, but 'jazz blues' is jazz, not blues. This is blues - ua-cam.com/video/NdgrQoZHnNY/v-deo.html That is NOT 'simple' music.
I appreciate that this is a jazz channel and that the question is really what is a blues in a jazz context rather than what is the blues, but this seems like a very odd approach to understanding the blues. Something like Charlie Patton's Spoonful Blues has nothing approaching the structure you suggest and really this sort of structure relates more to how blues became more formulaic (I appreciate your structure is more loose than 8/12 bar blues). I think of it in terms of a certain "bite" (and to be honest I find chords with more than one extension lacking that bite - sorry jazzers!), a certain rhythm, a certain preponderance of "blue" notes to convey feeling and an emphasis on microtonal expressiveness and a general melancholic feel. Structure is probably the least important factor IMO.
@@AimeeNolte Can you recognize a blues? Is part "A" the blues in "Wave"? )) || Dmaj7 | Bbo | Am7 | D7 | | Gmaj7 | Gm7 | F#7 | B7 | | Bm7E7 |Bb7A7| Dm7G7|Dm7G7|
Of course I can recognize blues, it's my native language, and I don't mean pentatonic electric guitar wankery, either. So, I'm about to fail this test, aren't I? Well, let's go...
You caught me on a couple! Though, I think your definition is too restricted by classical and institutional jazz harmonic assumptions. One example being the assumption of what "counts" as the subdominant turn after you "state the tonic". My understanding is it represents the response in a call and response. There might be inflections you could overlook because of thinking melodically in terms of "subdominant". You could also think of it melodically as "what would the feminine response sound like" in relation to that particular masculine ("tonic") call. I think that's just one alternative out of many possible alternative ways to approach the I-IV of the blues, and no more absolutely correct than any other approach. It's a thought experiment that people could try when singing or with an instrument they can play by ear. I usually emphasize the IV regardless, because that's usually part of the answer to all the most common queries, and I too have internalized what has become the standardized form. In my mind, Fmaj7 and F7 are varieties of the same chord, but that's based on my influences. Sometimes folk etymology can read like a history of malapropisms and superstition, so we don't really know for sure how the people who went out on their own, after plantations, thought about music. The stuff I've heard seems to go back to the early 1900s, but there aren't so many early 1st person accounts (even as spoken to a scribe) that I've found. Sorry for the ramble. At least it's in a sub-comment.
No this is good stuff. And in my class with Adam Neely, we get more into that stuff. What I do wish I would have touched on in this video is the call and response aspect, as well as what it means to play in a blues style as opposed to the blues form. Thanks for your thoughts!
I respectfully disagree. The blues is the notes that were outside the western diatonic scale sung by the slaves on the US plantations. Forms such as 12 bar, which is what you are referring to as the blues, can have no 'blue' notes and therefore not sound anything like the blues. Who said that 12 bar is the blues and only that is the blues?
Watch this video for free (and without ads) over on Nebula! nebula.tv/videos/aimeenoltemusic-can-you-recognize-the-blues/
Just remember Aimee, “the blues ain’t about makin’ yourself feel better, it’s about makin’ other people feel worse”! - Bleedin’-Gums Murphy
"...and make a quick buck out of it" :D
I love You and Adam Neely. I have learned so much from both of You.
This for me is one lesson of yours that really resonates! Because that proverbial "box" is really hard to break out of until you realize by varying the form & rhythms can set you free? Thank you 🙏🙏🙏
I know the blues inside out, maybe better than my mother (just joking). The definition of the chord structure at the beginning is correct and indeed the foundation of the *blues as incorporated in jazz, rock and other popular styles* . In good jazz teaching books it is called "basic blues". For playing in a band it is useful to have some kind of common structure on which we can apply chord substitutions etc, the usual chord chemistry stuff done in jazz. *However, the original blues is quite a different story* . If you would take a recording of one of those early street performances and apply the required chord structure on in, you would paradoxically have to say it's not a blues. The blues is a kind of music that does not fit in the usual western music, chord usage and tuning system. *The seed, heart and soul of the blues is melodic, not a structure of chords: the use of a scale with blue notes (not playable on piano) creating a mood of melancholy, suffering etc* . I'm not using the term blues scale to avoid confusion with that concept in jazz which is only a far approximation of the true blues scale. However, the influence of the blues on jazz is more important than just the contribution of that chord sequence structure that gave thousands of songs. Just a short explanation of a huge topic.
I'm tempted to distinguish between "a blues" (the song form that Aimee is describing) and The Blues, which is a broad musical culture and sensibility.
To your point, I think the idea of locking it to a chord structure is kinda tying it to European musical elements that don't need to be there. There's a rich blues tradition in Mali where a lot of songs sit on one drone-like chord and are defined more by melodic motif (as you described).
I think you can play "a blues" in a style that is fairly removed from the musical and cultural ideas of The Blues, you can play The Blues without adhering to the blues song structure, and you can incorporate ideas from The Blues into many other styles of music (thinking a lot of rock, bossa nova, etc).
Many people would describe a song like "Trouble in Mind" as a blues standard, ua-cam.com/video/LsPKW_MnhV8/v-deo.html It certainly does not have the conventional 12-bar structure. But I don't think that's the point that Aimee is trying to make. Oliver Nelson's "Stolen Moments" has nothing like the blues feeling of Lonnie Johnson and Otis Spann (the latter I heard in concert -- I'm that old!). But "Stolen Moments" is a sophisticated, "uptown" evolution of the same 12-bar chord progression that traces back to Robert Johnson, etc. We are asking two different questions.
@@thospe-f8x Aimee describes the harmonic structure of a jazz blues. When I hear an original blues, I hear a blues. When I hear a jazz blues, I hear a blues. I prefer not to mix music with a culture too much, because that often ends in destroying what music is: art. The original blues is a style of music that originated in America, in the black community subjected to slavery and poverty. So it has indeed a cultural context, as most music. Some even say that jazz is a way of living. But because I like old church music, it does not imply that I'm interested in Catholicism. I love Indian raga's, which does not require me to be Hindu. I prefer to focus on music as pure art (avoiding the ambiguous term culture) and therefore use the word *the blues* as a strictly artistic musical term denoting a style (with sub variations). I would call one of those early songs a(n original) blues, mainly technically characterized by the occurrence of the 3 blue notes in a specific scale. The later forms can be called a jazz blues, rock blues, country blues etc, each having their own characteristics. But, honestly, if any of these blueses is played without blue notes and other (non harmonic) stylistic attributes, I think we are broadening up the concept so much that it loses it's identity.
@@matthewgoldberg1461 In jazz, the blues became complex. Many people start asking how to recognize a jazz blues. Aimee shows the correct approach to find this out. I've heard other, less satisfying chord based explanations. But to make the picture complete, it's always good to keep in mind the roots from where all this originated, which involves melodic aspects too.
It's not about the actual chords, but if it's a blues, then functionally what you play or sing will do the same job as the actual chords would have done nevertheless. And of course space and time is malleable, to some degree.
It's like porn, you can usually tell
That was fun, thanks Aimee. Having previously watched some of Chase Sanborn's instruction on playing the blues was also helpful in appreciating what makes a blues a blues.
Thank you so much for this! And especially for the wonderful performances you found on UA-cam. So much wonderful musicianship. Their skill and passion is inspiring!
One of the best parts of starting to play music in the 60's was listening and playing a lot of Blues, the real stuff Chess Records, the acoustic Folk Blues , Chicago Blues, the singers, and practicing and jamming to those records. It was basic ear training, learning to play with feel, developing gut feeling for how many bars have gone by, how to accompany others. It was the common music that if someone sat in with our band we knew we could play. It really helped us build a foundation that we used for whatever other music we got into later. You hear some of the great players today say in interview how they studied the old Blues players of the 20's, 30's, 40's and on and how much they learned. As they say study the past and play in the present.
Joe Henderson's Isotope is always cool to me, with that turnaround descending in minor thirds.
I love to meld the blues with the long 4 b7 3 6 2 5 1 turnarounds, so I mix jazz with blues anyway... this is a very interesting, in depth compositional study to the subject. Well done, Aimee.
I just realized that I actually enjoy hearing your thoughts and feelings about the blues and am now left in a moral quandary about this: blues is not jazz but both intermingle.
Blues is 1)a very special musical feeling caused by b3 b5 and b7 (e.g. Boom Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker or Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf) 2)any twelve bar tune (Blues for Alice/Isotope/Blues on the Corner/Mr.P.C./Cousin Mary) 3)both of them (Doobie Doobie Blues by George Benson and many many more)
Another enjoyable video especially hearing Wayne Shorter's Footprints. Such a fantastic musician. Saw him with Weather Report in 1978 and he's left a deep impression on me.
Nice to feature Jake!
You did it again! I've heard "St. Louis Blues"in a big band, or in bands, but never heard the lyrics.
I love "Wave" It is one of my favorites
I never thought of it as being a "blues with a bridge" like "Unit 7" or "Locomotion," but... it kind of is! Really puts a different spin on it.
Great educational video Aimee, thanks 😊
Cool, looking forward to see you and Adam on Nebula! 🎹🎸🎶
Love it! Thanks Aimee
Fascinating to see different perspectives on things. I would have never thought of the blues as a structural thing, to me it's almost more of a performance style.
Basically, in my guitarist brain, blues is made out of blue notes. And if you bend the strings, and play your thirds in between the major third and minor third, and likewise with the sevenths, then Mozart can be performed as bluesy.
At any rate, the observation that the jump to IV is the most important part of the 12-bar structure is rather deep, and something I shall meditate upon.
"Blues" gets used two ways: it describes a genre of music, but it's also a musical form, generally 12 bars in length. The blues form really transcends genre: it's used in pretty much every style of popular music you can think of. I even used to play a Nintendo game (River City Ransom) growing up that used a 12-bar blues as its main music. In B major, no less!
Thanks for all this Aimee. I wonder if what constitutes a Blues is in the harmony progression only, or the style? For instance does a Bossa Nova using a Blues progression make that song a Blues?
Or.... given there is a Blues progression used in Bossa or Folk or Reggae, is it rather not a 'Blues' or what is very popular today... a Fusion??
So whilst there are Blues chord progressions, yet there are different genres involved?
For example, typical Fusions of different genres where the different styles are evident but are blended.... e.g RnB & Neo Soul, or Funk & & Neo Soul, or even RnB & Funk & Neo Soul?!
So, is it possible that several songs are not just Blues because of their chord progression, but although incorporating Blues harmonies, there us actually a Fusion involved - which makes a new creation??
another great video . Thanks Aimee!
I’ve always wondered about Footprints being written in 3/4 as a kind of half time blues. When I originally transcribed it, I notated it as 6/8 for this reason (subdivided into 3 pulses)
I think of it in 6/8 too
Adam's apple, Solar, Bluesette...
i like to show my students that should i stay or should i go is just a blues :p
Peg by Steely Dan is also a blues, and with maj7 chords instead of dominant for the I IV and V
I was very surprised to learn that Ginger Bread Boy, by Jimmy Heath, is a sixteen bar blues - a pretty odd sounding one if so. I was also surprised that They're Red Hot by Robert Johnson is NOT a blues.
When I play blues, I have nicknames for the three sections - the Theme, the Mirror and the Release. (The Release is the only one that is a genuine term that other people use though.)
Hi Aimee,
As a harmonica player, I've intuited what the blues are, I guess, in the style that I play it and the key of harp I reach for. Other musicians have said things to me that I don't quite understand, like if I use a certain key it will be more bluesy. Generally, A and E are my go-to blues keys. I use D sometimes. My friend Larry has a song in his piano he calls Third Rock Blues, it's a great climate change song and it's in DM/ Am.
You could probably show me how it's not just the key you're playing in but what the structure does. It's above my theoretical knowledge. I always thought that the blues were a certain approach to the structure of a song, like, sing a line, repeat a line, maybe once more then sing a line that adds meaning or resolves something that the repeated lines lay out. I'm being so basic here but that's just me, the painter who wandered into music... I'll be sending this video, though, to Larry the pianist and Don the guitarist. They know theory better than I do.
Some of your music choices are bringing me back to old CBC radio show theme songs.uke that last one, and I think, the Wayne Shorter. CBC radio has great theme tunes. Like the famous Swinging Shepherd Blues by Canada's Moe Hoffman...or maybe you'd say that's not really the blues!
Now I'm not sure about the blues.
Thank you so much, again. It's a true pleasure, and you have really made my Sunday morning coffee perfectly enhanced. Cheers dave
The picture of me vacuum made me laugh so hard.
Scott Henderson's "The Crawling Horror" is another tune that blew my mind when I noticed it was a very weird type of 12 bar blues
I love jazz blues. Another cool one is Wes Montgomery's West Coast Blues, which is another waltz with a cool turnaround. Another, that doesn't go to the IV chord, but I know it's a 12 bar blues is Charles Mingus's Nostalgia In Times Square. My new most amazing 16 bar blues is guitarist, Bob DeVos's After Burner. Will burn your face off, LOL. ...... Concerning Wave,. I sometimes quote Wave in my solo over a blues and it sometimes freaks people out. One guy told me he thought he was lost and got nervous that he had forgotten the changes on a blues. Kinda fun 😊. Thanks for the great video, Aimee!!!!
That’s hilarious about Wave 😂
@@AimeeNolte true story 😎
Smokestack Lightening by Howlin Wolf is the quintessential blues and its only one chord, E7. ua-cam.com/video/HTDjD_UdJYs/v-deo.html
There are also 2-chord/4-bar blues, 8-bar blues, 9-bar blues, etc. So, there are many harmonic forms. The thing that they all have in common is that African lyrical style of singing or playing a line and then pausing - call and response.
Law Years, Ornette Coleman ?
If the chordal underpinnings is removed, can you still have a "blues"? Could the melody and form alone create a blues?
I don't know.
In this case, we hear A, we hear A, then we hear B for bass.
If we imagine C- being able to support first A and F as a possible support for second A, and a G drone as support for the bass solo, do we have a blues?
I really do not know.
My ears tell me no on this one but it’s an interesting case. I might be wrong.
I would say that the structure is not one of the more important elements of blues, since the structure can be malleable or even nonexistent. (look at "Smokestack Lightning" or quite a few John Lee Hooker songs, which don't have any chord structure or anything resembling AAB)
First and foremost is the feel. Everything else is subservient to that. You can follow everything else and still not be playing blues if the feeling isn't there.
A few months ago it hit me in the head that Footprints was a minor blues. Why did it take so long? For me the sound of going to the IV chord is a very distinct sound and when I hear that in the 5th bar my brain automatically listens for the V sound in bar 9.
It also helps that a fair number of standards jump to the IV to start the bridge. Maybe that's a good topic suggestion, the distinctive sounds of particular modulations.
You might want to look the way even some bona fide Blues performers such as Freddy King with songs like "Tore Down" that incorporate various extensions into the form, they weren't all strict 12 bars.
ua-cam.com/video/YB52eLfirFA/v-deo.html
One of the questions on a past final exam was a "yes/no" on whether songs were a 12-bar blues. Thelonious Monk's "Bemsha Swing" is one that seems like a blues, but isn't. "Solar" is a 12-bar form, but it's not the blues. "Nostalgia in Times Square" is something I'd call a blues, but with altered chords. "Killer Joe" isn't really a blues, but I've had pro musicians call the A sections blues. "Sweet Georgia Brown" goes to the IV chord on the fifth bar, but it's not really a blues, either.
I'm not so sure I could recognize the blues when there's enough harmonic alteration: my ears can handle a little bit, but a "Bird Blues" going briefly into an altered IV chord, then only briefly going back to the I... I pretty much have to count the measures. This killed me once in a jam session.
I'd never thought about "Butch and Butch" being a couple... .
Rock musicians like to anchor their harmony using 7ths chords so that they can borrow from the blues. It is an easy way to do it is widely common to discuss 7ths as blues harmonic secret in relation to contemporary rock.
My favorite "hip" blues is Chain Lighting by Steely Dan! They take it in a lot of cool directions!
Steely Dan did so many cool things to the blues: "Peg" is really a blues, and "Bodhisattva" has some neat chord changes, too. There's a video out there about the making of _Aja_ -- for those who haven't seen it, it's worth looking for: Donald Fagen talks about his take on the blues.
This is an education in a bunch of directions, thank you! Not to be untoward, but as a side note, kudos to whoever is doing your hair, looks great.
Her name is me. And thank you. ♥️
Aimee this great! Any chance you could do this with other genres as well?
FWIW, I've been playing what each community calls "blues" now for more than a decade.
Nobody I know in the "traditional blues" community thinks there is such a thing as a "minor blues" -- that is a jazzer-only neologism. In its origin, the blues is an all-dominant-seventh-all-the-time genre: minor-7th-flat-5 and dominant-seventh-flat-nine are RIGHT OUT, leave alone the idea that the one-chord might be a minor-7th. At the most, the "traditional blues" community will entertain a "round-the-horn" progression (III7-VI7-II7-V7-I7) in some "old" ragtime songs (note that the "II7" and "III7" chords in these progressions are *not* minor, but straight-up dominant-seventh chords).
When I have played in jams with jazzers along with "trad blues" players, I have frequently seen the annoyance in the trad players for the jazzers insistence on shifting to "ii-V" chords where the "original" songs just played "IV-V", or otherwise "decorating" the normal blues progression with out-of-norm chord changes.
There are plenty of "traditional songs" that blues players play which violate the rules of the classic 12-bar blues ("St. James' Infirmary", for one), but nobody in the "traditional blues" community calls such songs "blues".
Great channel! You separate the men from the boys with so much neo-jazz out there👍
“This Masquerade” kinda feels like a blues. Also, it starts on the tonic, hits the sub-dominant (although one bar early), and the dominant before returning to the tonic. Would this one qualify?
Great video! Cheers, Anton, the Netherlands
Just an advanced beginner guitar player. Aprreciate the video. But what gives non blues that bluesy sound? Is it hitting the flat 3 or flat 5 or is it the movement of notes. A solo that comes to mind that sounds bluesy, but I don't thiink it is. Is Steely Dan's Bad Sneakers. Walter Becher's sols sounds bluesy
Aimee, thank you for making this video.
You’ve really opened my mind to how the blues has so many more possibilities than what I’ve previously thought. Blues in 3/4. I would have never thought of that.
So just to check, Steely Dan.
Deacon Blues, not a blues.
Chain Lightning, Blues?
Nailed it. Chain Lightening goes to the IV chord with the seven of that chord as the bass note which is a super hip twist
@@AimeeNolte I didn’t know that about the bass note. I’ll listen for it.
Thank you Aimee.
Nice hair Aimee, love the vid
"Chasin' the Trane" is (to my ears) a blues
The version of "Footprints" on "Miles Smiles" is more 12/8 than anything (though people seem to usually play it in 3/4)
Blues is a feeling not a chord structure such as only 1-4-5 after all there is a history of 1 cord blues if you want to institutionalize blues you may have lost what feeling is
I do regret not talking more about this kind of thing in my video. However, the purpose of my video was just to point out some fun jazz tunes that people might not realize are blueses. Thanks for watching.
Solar, M. Davis?
Yes!
Great tune. Goes down a whole step for the second four bars; different turnaround in the last 4. I don't really think of it as a blues, but hey... there aren't exactly police for this.
Unchain My Heart
Great video!📍
Very interesting! These ways those composers deceive us...
Aimee, fascinating video. I would just point out that I feel Footprints as 12 bars in 6/4, and one of my fake books indeed notates is that way. The 24-bar notation feels too busy for me. I prefer the lilt of 3+3
I’m the same
Uhh, I'm colour blind, so I get a pass in not recognizing all the Blues. It was a problem with Prince and his Purple Rain. Everybody raises their hands and rocks back and forth...and I rocked forth and back and had a shoulder injury.
I have never heard of this strict I-IV definition of the blues. I have also never heard of the blues being used like a countable noun. e.g. "a blues, two blueses". did I miss that somewhere or is that an Aimee Nolte thing?
There is “the blues” and then there is “a blues” and one refers to a genre and the other to a form
hmm. So, John Lee Hooker isn't blues? (many of his songs never hit the 5, and a couple never leave the 1) I'm now curious who made this definition and if it's really broad enough. Have you ever seen John Lee Hooker's music classified as something other than blues?
Genre's not the same as form. If it doesn't go to the Y, it's not a 12-bar blues. It's a boogie blues, a "1-chord" blues.
A great video and a necessary one, but I wonder if it were better called "Can You Recognize *A* Blues"? I can think of some tunes or recordings that are certainly *the* blues, that don't adhere to the formula of *a* blues that you use here (and which I do recognize as a definition of the *form*). For instance, what about a one-chord blues, such as the kind that John Lee Hooker often did (Hobo Blues, e.g., ua-cam.com/video/1kQlRQRGdfQ/v-deo.html). What about the rollin'-and-tumblin' form, which is usually done starting on the IV-chord, the first four bars and the second four having the same form? I have heard (but can't bring an example to mind) some old blues and jazz recordings that go from I immediately to V in bar four and get around to IV later. I would not want to be the one telling Mr. Hooker or, say, Clarence Williams (if they were still around), or any of the others, sorry that's not the blues.
(I wonder if there are examples in Jazz of the one-chord blues and the rollin'-and-tumblin' form?)
Great thoughts
What about Black and White by Michael Jackson? It follows a 12-bar blues chord sequence but doesn't sound bluesy at all. (at least not to me)... It is a blues or is it not...
Yeah totally!
12 bars, I-IV-V... never crossed my mind until now!
Great video (as usual). Hearing is the most important skill and hearing the harmony tells you if it is a blues. #AimeeNolteMusic Could the songs that were not blues be reharmonized to become blues?
you're so beautiful and so talented, i can't believe you haven't reached a 1M subs yet. I love your videos Aimee.
So if you take an obvious blues melody and reharmonise it so it no longer moves to the four chord etc is it no longer a blues?
I don't know what it is about piano but it's an instrument my ear always has a problem tracking, maybe it has something to do with my ear never got developed with piano music, I can hear guitar bass and piano even horns but piano I can't really hear what chords are playing.
Here's a simple one: How to you think about "Outside woman blues" [Blind Joe Reynolds, then Cream]? No 4 chord whatsoever but with an obvious dominant 5 chord.
I think that totally sounds like a blues. It’s a great example. They just skip the four. Very cool.
Wait, why is this the definition of The Blues™? How is it useful? If I play blues licks over Angel Eyes at a jam, am I gonna get vibed?
When I pick a genre distinction, it's either descriptive, or to connect an artist to a "scene". For example, the fans refer to Cardiacs as "pronk": the portmanteau of "prog" and "punk", as well as "pronk" being a funny word, is a good description of Cardiacs' sound. But I'll also call them "prog rock" to connect them to bands like King Crimson because if you're a fan of KC, there's a decent chance you'll like Cardiacs.
No that’s not what I’m saying at all. Playing blues licks, or playing with a blue Z sound, is cool over just about any song. I’m just talking about the form.
Falou de blues, Tom Jobim, e Rita Payes no mesmo vídeo. = Like
A blues changes to the iv at the 5th bar, right?
The IV. Yes
I live the blues...
Good video - fyi Blues is already plural. I don’t believe there is such a word as “Blueses”
Nuw subscriber here! Hey y’all!
I don't like leaving comments... but this is all 'jazz blues'. Blues is in a parallel major minor unless it's a specific 'minor blues', which is the exception and the trickiest to play. If you're looking at functional harmony, it's not blues. 7#9 subs aren't in blues. John Lee Hooker 'Serves Me Right to Suffer', BB's 'Sweet Little Angel' or Howlin Wolf's 'Smokestack lightning' are all blues. Blues for Alice is a Jazz Blues.
What do you get when you play blues too quickly? Jazz. Blues has a b7 on every chord, there's no dominant, it has microtones and comes from field hollers in the south, which is why you have a 'chorus' - chorein in Greek is to 'sing'. Stormy Monday is felt by the lyrics, not the chords, not the 'sections' - no one playing blues is going to say 'the subdominant' - it's the 4, 5, 1. Or just the 1. The A A B is in the lyrics, not counted by the bars. It's storytelling.
The blues isn't just 'that stuff you find in jazz sometimes' - blues is its own genre. It came before jazz, but it wasn't respectable. You know it when you hear it and if you can't hear it, don't play it. No blues has a 'dominant' because there is no functional western harmony in blues. It's based entirely around the lyrics, NOT the chords. You don't do fancy chord tricks, but the exact opposite which if you don't acknowledge, diminishes respect for guys like Wolf or John Lee who didn't change chords from the 1 (a b7, not major 7).
It is not a 'simple form'. That's the illusion and what a mediocre 'blues' player thinks. To hear the parallel major minor, 'blue' notes which aren't the b5 but microtones, drawn from the human voice, as well as the 3:2 or 2:3 polyrhythm feel inserted is how you appreciate blues - complexity made to look simple. It's not simple, and hard to teach. You have to learn it for yourself. It required originality from uneducated musicians who did amazing things without leaning on the ii-V-I crutches, and in general slower tempos.
Jazz is great - but jazz blues is still jazz, as in this video. Please understand the difference is a matter of both tradition and respect for the art form. There is a broad variety of blues, but 'jazz blues' is jazz, not blues.
This is blues - ua-cam.com/video/NdgrQoZHnNY/v-deo.html That is NOT 'simple' music.
I guess why they call it the blues... :)
I appreciate that this is a jazz channel and that the question is really what is a blues in a jazz context rather than what is the blues, but this seems like a very odd approach to understanding the blues. Something like Charlie Patton's Spoonful Blues has nothing approaching the structure you suggest and really this sort of structure relates more to how blues became more formulaic (I appreciate your structure is more loose than 8/12 bar blues).
I think of it in terms of a certain "bite" (and to be honest I find chords with more than one extension lacking that bite - sorry jazzers!), a certain rhythm, a certain preponderance of "blue" notes to convey feeling and an emphasis on microtonal expressiveness and a general melancholic feel. Structure is probably the least important factor IMO.
Joe Satriani Flyin in a blue dream is blues!
|| C lyd | % | % | % |
| Ab lyd | % | C lyd | % |
| G lyd | F lyd | C lyd | % || (24 bars - each bar x2 )
Niiiiice
@@AimeeNolte Can you recognize a blues?
Is part "A" the blues in "Wave"? ))
|| Dmaj7 | Bbo | Am7 | D7 |
| Gmaj7 | Gm7 | F#7 | B7 |
| Bm7E7 |Bb7A7| Dm7G7|Dm7G7|
@@PopovSB That’s right. That’s what I said in the video. :-)
@@AimeeNolte oh, sorry, I already forgot!!
Of course I can recognize blues, it's my native language, and I don't mean pentatonic electric guitar wankery, either. So, I'm about to fail this test, aren't I? Well, let's go...
You caught me on a couple! Though, I think your definition is too restricted by classical and institutional jazz harmonic assumptions. One example being the assumption of what "counts" as the subdominant turn after you "state the tonic". My understanding is it represents the response in a call and response. There might be inflections you could overlook because of thinking melodically in terms of "subdominant". You could also think of it melodically as "what would the feminine response sound like" in relation to that particular masculine ("tonic") call.
I think that's just one alternative out of many possible alternative ways to approach the I-IV of the blues, and no more absolutely correct than any other approach. It's a thought experiment that people could try when singing or with an instrument they can play by ear. I usually emphasize the IV regardless, because that's usually part of the answer to all the most common queries, and I too have internalized what has become the standardized form. In my mind, Fmaj7 and F7 are varieties of the same chord, but that's based on my influences. Sometimes folk etymology can read like a history of malapropisms and superstition, so we don't really know for sure how the people who went out on their own, after plantations, thought about music. The stuff I've heard seems to go back to the early 1900s, but there aren't so many early 1st person accounts (even as spoken to a scribe) that I've found.
Sorry for the ramble. At least it's in a sub-comment.
No this is good stuff. And in my class with Adam Neely, we get more into that stuff. What I do wish I would have touched on in this video is the call and response aspect, as well as what it means to play in a blues style as opposed to the blues form. Thanks for your thoughts!
:)
If it does not feel like blues, it is not Blues. If it does not have lyrics it is not Blues. If there is a big band on the stage it is not Blues.
I respectfully disagree. The blues is the notes that were outside the western diatonic scale sung by the slaves on the US plantations. Forms such as 12 bar, which is what you are referring to as the blues, can have no 'blue' notes and therefore not sound anything like the blues. Who said that 12 bar is the blues and only that is the blues?