Characteristics of the blues
What are the 2 main musical characteristics of blues?
The blues has a distinct melancholic and somber tone, which is achieved through vocal techniques such as melisma, rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” guitar strings on the neck or applying a metal slide to the guitar strings to create a whining voicelike sound.
What are the characteristics of blues rock?
Characteristics that blues rock adopted from electric blues include its dense texture, basic blues band instrumentation, rough declamatory vocal style, heavy guitar riffs, string-bending blues-scale guitar solos, strong beat, thick riff-laden texture, and posturing performances.
What are 3 facts about blues music?
Blues music quickly spread to other parts of the United States, and it eventually became popular worldwide. Blues music is now considered to be one of the most popular genres of music in the world. The blues music genre has evolved over the years, and there are now many styles of blues music.
What defines a blues song?
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s by African-Americans from roots in African-American work songs and spirituals. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads.
Why are the blues called blues?
The name of this great American music probably originated with the 17th-century English expression “the blue devils,” for the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. Shortened over time to “the blues,” it came to mean a state of agitation or depression.
What influenced blues music?
Blues developed in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–65). It was influenced by work songs and field hollers, minstrel show music, ragtime, church music, and the folk and popular music of the white population.
Who started the blues?
The blues originated on Southern plantations in the 19th Century. Its inventors were slaves, ex-slaves and the descendants of slaves—African-American sharecroppers who sang as they toiled in the cotton and vegetable fields.
How many types of blues are there?
Blues comes in many different flavors, roughly 25 of them, each with their own nuances and style. Here are a few of the most popular genres of blues music and how you can recognize them from the first note! This piano-based style was a natural evolution from the early 1900s style of stride piano.
What two notes of the blues scale are normally flattened?
In the blues scale, there are particular notes which have a bluesy sound. Those notes are the flat 5 and the minor 3rd. These notes are the notes which sound the bluesiest, so if you’re looking for a quick easy route to sound bluesy!
What are the type of blues?
Modern studies of the blues identify a range of different styles of blues: delta blues, country blues, down-home blues, urban blues, harmonica blues and so on.
Which form is the most common type of blues music?
The most common musical form of blues is the 12-bar blues. The term “12-bar” refers to the number of measures, or musical bars, used to express the theme of a typical blues song.
What are characteristics of jazz music?
Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
Who is called the father of the blues?
For his efforts in making Blues famous, W.C. Handy is known as the “Father of the Blues.”
What influenced blues music?
Blues developed in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–65). It was influenced by work songs and field hollers, minstrel show music, ragtime, church music, and the folk and popular music of the white population.
What are the two styles of blues?
Mississippi is considered the birthplace of the blues, and two distinct styles developed in the region—Delta blues and hill country blues.
Who invented blues?
The blues originated on Southern plantations in the 19th Century. Its inventors were slaves, ex-slaves and the descendants of slaves—African-American sharecroppers who sang as they toiled in the cotton and vegetable fields.
Who wrote the first blues?
The first blues song published was called “I Got The Blues”. It was a ragtime blues, written by Anthony Maggio and published in 1908. The second blues song published was the “Dallas Blues” written by Hart Wand and published in March 1912.
Who made the first blues song?
Having always immersed himself in the African American music of his era, Handy eventually began writing songs describing the hardships he had experienced. In 1912 he published “Memphis Blues,” now considered the first blues song.