Thursday, June 23, 2011

About the "Blues Conversation"


I got the feeling at the last meeting that I did communicate well when I talked about the "blues conversation" that is the back and forth dialogue between musicians in a blues number.  This is a classic example of two very good French musicians having a conversation with their instruments.   Listen for the give and take, how one takes the lead for a while and then the other.  Notice how the person on backup (mostly harp here) "fills in the spaces" and occasionally plays with and even gently over the other player.  Listen for the conversation.  Blues is all about call and response, lead and refrain.  Without getting too technical, I haven't taken the time to figure out what key they are playing in here but you can tell from the sound that the harp player is probably playing third or fourth position on a diatonic to harmonize with the guitar and vocals.  That will put her generally in the same key but I don't believe that the scales would be exactly the same.  But, as you can tell from the sound the overall effect is quite good.

Moderator Bill

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