blues again

It's woefully inadequate to try to sum up blues (or any art, of
course) in a few paragraphs...I just wanted to say that, to me, the
blues is one of the deepest and most profound forms of music to ever
exist. Learning it is a lifelong process, and has little to do with
scales. After I show a student the blues scale, I tell them that blues
has zero to do with this array of notes, and is more like learning a
language (like Japanese)...then, I play a few rather complex blues
phrases to make the point real. Of course, people need something to
play, so scales/arpeggios and etc. must be shown to folks to get them
rolling. Any blues/jazz musician is automatically a composer/arranger as
well, since no one can tell you what to play in blues, or when to play
it...it's all up to you...that's why it's so difficult to teach.
And again, as far as "the" blues scale, as soon as one starts
bending strings, the scale is only a springboard for the deep and subtle
microtonal expressions which are possible (of course,
sax/trumpets/trombones etc. bend notes too, not to mention vocalists,
which are the true source of blues in the first place). If there ever
was an art form which was "non intellectual," it's blues. But, again,
Parker style blues is really really intricate, and can involve
incredible varieties of altered chords and chromaticism. In BB King's
autobiography, he says that Parker's music was just as deep as Muddy
Waters...I agree.
I really enjoy playing 19 tone blues, because it affords me a chance
to stretch the form, but in a very evolutionary way. The blues seems to
be very stagnant now (as most art is at this time), with Hendrix being
the last innovator. Michael Hill (in New York) is very creative, but is
having a hard time being accepted because he doesn't sound like he's
"supposed" to...which is a great thing, artistically, but not so good in
a society that values imitation over originality. I had a friend in
Dallas tell me that if you didn't play a Strat (in Dallas), folks didn't
think you were a blues player...while oversimplified, there's a valid
point there. From what I hear and see lately, the blues is about
sounding like folks "used" to sound, and dressing like a bluesman is
"supposed" to look...little progress has been made in this vital form of
music in many years...that's too bad...Hstick

I can vouch for what Neil is saying. Last year I toured Chicago playing lead
guitar (on a Martin with 13s) with a blues/folk trio. We omitted the folk
part from most of our gigs there, including one at Buddy Guy's Legends. That
bar is notorious for booing people off the stage. As a white kid from
Queens, I really had to "reach" in a spiritual sense when it was time for my
solos (100% improvised). I got rousing cheers for all of them. (Just so you
all know that I'm not just a theorist.)

I normally play lead on elecric guitar and feel tapped into the blues
tradition, albeit greatly filtered through British rock. On electric guitar,
virtually every note I play has some combination of bending and vibrato. As
much as I hate to admit it, just intonation has little to do with the
correct microtonal alterations, except when playing two or more notes at the
same time. It is much akin to speaking a language with the correct accent --
it's a traditional style that has crystallized in a certain way (although
there are certainly "dialects") and in order to say anything you've got to
know how things have been said before. The microtones are not there to
maximize consonance but to provide expressive possibilities and tendencies
not present in the 12-tone system. They also may derive from a musical
language that reaches back to ancient Africa.

I may not know what I'm talking about, but as a performer I know the blues
on a gut level, and I know when it feels right. And when it feels right,
there's no better feeling in the world. My overactive intellect has to take
a back seat at moments like this. I'd probably be happier without it.

Dear Mr Erlich,

You might be interested to know that I have found the mathematical
"foundation" for the micro-tuning "used" in singing by the Beatles, Chicago,
Elton John, St Martin in the Fields playing Mozart, and a complete violin
concerto which will sound out of tune if I do not play it exactly like I know
it should (this concerto is already "booked" by my friends once it comes out
in cd).

If you are intersted, I can email to you some midi files I tuned them
with pitchwheel.. I also like you to send me some of your midi files so I
tune them, and you to listen to find them tuned correctly per your
interpretation
or not.

The problem with people finding "microtuning" not fitting into real
performance is due to their indulgence in a believe that "all" chords
or melodies must have very many, or all, "just" intervals with one
another. The truth is that melodies, even, in several different parts,
must first be each in tune with themselves.

Linus Liu.

Paul H. Erlich wrote:

> From: "Paul H. Erlich" <PErlich@Acadian-Asset.com>
>
> I can vouch for what Neil is saying. Last year I toured Chicago playing lead
> guitar (on a Martin with 13s) with a blues/folk trio. We omitted the folk
> part from most of our gigs there, including one at Buddy Guy's Legends. That
> bar is notorious for booing people off the stage. As a white kid from
> Queens, I really had to "reach" in a spiritual sense when it was time for my
> solos (100% improvised). I got rousing cheers for all of them. (Just so you
> all know that I'm not just a theorist.)
>
> I normally play lead on elecric guitar and feel tapped into the blues
> tradition, albeit greatly filtered through British rock. On electric guitar,
> virtually every note I play has some combination of bending and vibrato. As
> much as I hate to admit it, just intonation has little to do with the
> correct microtonal alterations, except when playing two or more notes at the
> same time. It is much akin to speaking a language with the correct accent --
> it's a traditional style that has crystallized in a certain way (although
> there are certainly "dialects") and in order to say anything you've got to
> know how things have been said before. The microtones are not there to
> maximize consonance but to provide expressive possibilities and tendencies
> not present in the 12-tone system. They also may derive from a musical
> language that reaches back to ancient Africa.
>
> I may not know what I'm talking about, but as a performer I know the blues
> on a gut level, and I know when it feels right. And when it feels right,
> there's no better feeling in the world. My overactive intellect has to take
> a back seat at moments like this. I'd probably be happier without it.
>
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I'm not sure I'm even looking for an answer here, but I've always
wondered: how DO those blues guys know to play all those microtonal
intervals, when they most likely never, ever think about exactly what
they're doing, and I'm positive that they never sat down and worked out
a system of just where to bend a string, for example, or how to hit just
the right note with their voices, which much of the time, falls outside
of the 12 eq scale, and most likely falls outside of ANY fixed scales?
Do certain ratios, or, more accurately, points on a musical pitch
continuum, correspond to certain feelings, emotions? Does the inner
feeling of, say, a blues singer guide him to the right point on the
pitch continuum? And, will the same feeling always evoke the same note
(corresponding to the same ratio) consistently? Is sadness always the
same ratio? If not, why not? It's interesting to speculate on these
things, because I believe this is the essence of music...Hstick

Yes, good thoughts, Neil. Thanks for sharing them! I obviously agree,
as implied by my response to Paul at one point, that you can go too
far in trying to rationalize every such melodic inflection in terms
of JI no matter what primes you make available to your analysis.

On the other hand, I also believe that the most musical of blues
singers do have a common intonational BASIS for their microtonal
departures from conventional western tonalities. The operative word
here is BASIS. This does NOT imply to me, therefore, that we must
attempt to explain every little melodic nuance harmonically in terms
of JI or anything else other that what it simply is melodically.

I also feel an implication in your musings here that you feel that
there must be some kind of underlying, intuitive tuning into
correspondences between feeling and pitch inflections that are not
completely arbitrary...that there might be some deep basis in the
feeling and pitch interface structure that these singers are tapping
into.

I find that kind of thinking fascinating in the light of the Indian
philosophy of ragas regarding a correspondence in some absolute
sense between specific melodic "infrastructures" (ragas) and moods or
times of the day. Teh principle is the same, I would think, namely
that specific types and movements in pitch inflections can invoke
certain universally reliable reactions in terms of feeling or emotion
in musically sensitive listeners.

This is pretty deep stuff and hard to substantiate, but I feel that
this is not completely frivolous or futile territory for musical
exploration. Bach was heavily into a kind of analogous thinking in
terms of musical structure in general (not microtonal inflections so
much, accept as Werckmeister or whatever might imply that as well).

Mainstream musicology tends to scoff at this and the Indian philospy,
too, as superstitious or at the very least, quaintly mystical
thinking, but I think the western scientific paradigm is much more
limiting in its perception of reality than it thinks it is.

--- In tuning@y..., "Neil Haverstick" <STICK@U...> wrote:
> I'm not sure I'm even looking for an answer here, but I've always
> wondered: how DO those blues guys know to play all those microtonal
> intervals, when they most likely never, ever think about exactly
what
> they're doing, and I'm positive that they never sat down and worked
out
> a system of just where to bend a string, for example, or how to hit
just
> the right note with their voices, which much of the time, falls
outside
> of the 12 eq scale, and most likely falls outside of ANY fixed
scales?
> Do certain ratios, or, more accurately, points on a musical pitch
> continuum, correspond to certain feelings, emotions? Does the inner
> feeling of, say, a blues singer guide him to the right point on the
> pitch continuum? And, will the same feeling always evoke the same
note
> (corresponding to the same ratio) consistently? Is sadness always
the
> same ratio? If not, why not? It's interesting to speculate on these
> things, because I believe this is the essence of music...Hstick