European and African Elements 2
Performers didn't necessarily repeat the lines the same way every time: the rhyming line might be sung differently on a different occasion, with the third line replaced, for instance, by "I come to work, so please don't turn me down" or by another line pertinent to a given occasion. This flexibility, which meant that singers did not have to keep to a specific group of verses, was also a creative stimulus. Blues singers could devise their verses but often borrow lines or half-lines and resolve them differently (Oliver 2012, n.p.).
The repetition of a three-line text stanzaThe division of a poem that consists of a series of written lines arranged together. This is usually in the form of a recurring pattern of meter and rhyme. In music, a stanza, or verse, is a poem set to music with a recurring pattern of both rhyme and meter. A "strophic" song (as opposed to a "through-composed" song) has several stanzas or verses set to music that remains the same or similar with each stanza. Many hymns follow this pattern. to the same music is known as strophic form. Each stanza adds to the unfolding story.
The strophic form is similar to a hymn structure, but hymns don't have an unfolding story; instead, their text delivers a religious message. Musically, blues songs employ the tonic-(I)The note upon which a scale or key is based; the first note of a scale or key; the keynote., dominant-(V)The fifth tone of a scale , and sub-dominant-(IV)A chord which uses as its root the subdominant note of a key; the IV chord, the chord based upon the fourth tone of the scale chords, often concluding with diminishedA chord that has a diminished interval between its highest and lowest notes. sevenths (BB King Guitar Lesson). Also, as stated above, the mode of singing and word choice was mostly personal to each singer, which is one of the main reasons why blues became rapidly popular as a means of individual self-expression. In this mode of expression, singers would also bendAn instrumental technique used to raise or lower pitch slightly. For example, on guitar, the player pushed the string sideways against the fret. the melodic shape and use the blues scaleA diatonic major scale incorporating a lowered or bent 3rd, a lowered or bent 7th and sometimes a lowered or bent 5th to approximate melodic notes that originated in African work songs. Since the actual pitch is unavailable on a piano, the lowered note is often played or "crushed" against the natural pitch to approximate the blue note.. Instrumentalists would simultaneously incorporate a slideA playing technique in which a guitar player slides a metal bar or glass neck from a bottle across the strings to alter the timbre., or bottleneck, to alter the timbre on string instruments.
BB King Guitar Lesson - Phrasing Over G Progression [ 00:00-00:00 ]