Blues Guitar For Dummies. Jon Chappell
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Название: Blues Guitar For Dummies

Автор: Jon Chappell

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Музыка, балет

Серия:

isbn: 9781119748960

isbn:

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      “Woke up this mornin’ and I feel like playin’ the blues.” Well, you don’t have to just sing about it; you can dig right in and start doing something about it! The information in this part gets you thinking like a blues guitar player. Chapter 1 outlines what’s contained in the book and spells out what you need to do from buying a guitar to playing it to maintaining it. In Chapter 2, you jump into the mechanics of what makes guitars tick — their method of sound production and how the various gizmos and other hardware operate. Get ready to assume the position in Chapter 3 — the playing position, that is. You hold the guitar in a sitting and standing position, place your hands correctly, and figure out how to tune up. You see how the notation for the music figures works, and hey, you even get to strum a chord!

      Every Day I Have the Blues … Hallelujah!

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Discovering the roots of blues

      

Identifying the different parts of the guitar and how they work

      

Differentiating between acoustic and electric guitars

      

Looking like a blues player

      

Testing your blues guitar knowledge

      Playing the blues is a healthy way of expressing emotion — therapeutic even. The great irony about the blues is that it’s fun — don’t let those gloomy lyrics fool you for one second. Experiencing the blues is entertainment for both the listener and the player. Because the blues is fun and healthy, it draws people into jam sessions, crowded clubs, and grand concert halls.

      To listen to the blues is to be healed. To play the blues is to be a healer. Want to help people? Forget about being a doctor; you’re only allowed to see one patient at a time. And there’s no pill you can prescribe for an ailing mojo. Be a blues player instead and help thousands at a time just by playing a smokin’ blues riff on overdrive. Now, that’s what I call medicinal!

      The blues has a wide range of sounds, feels, emotions, and passions, and people have many different associations when you say the word blues. To some, the blues is the sparse-sounding acoustic fingerpicking of Robert Johnson. To others, it’s the gritty sound of Muddy Waters in a crowded club on Chicago’s South Side or the hard-rock wall of sound coming from a stadium playing host to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, or Johnny Winter. It doesn’t matter which particular image is conjured, because it’s all the blues. After reading this book, playing through the examples, and listening to the audio tracks, you may have a more complete and expanded picture of all that the blues can be.

      As perfect as the blues is for the guitar, it didn’t come from the guitar. The blues sprang from the unaccompanied human voice. There have been sad songs since the dawn of music, but the blues is a special kind of sadness that was born out of the African American experience at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. When the African-influenced field hollers and work songs met European folk songs, spirituals, and ballads (supported by harmonicas, banjos, guitars, washtub basses, fiddles, drums, spoons, and other instruments of the time) a unique form of music emerged that was neither wholly African nor European, but totally American.

      

Today, the blues can be anything from a solo acoustic guitarist strumming simple chords to a big band with a horn section, a lead singer, and background vocalists. Artists as diverse as blues diva Bonnie Raitt, rockabilly giant Brian Setzer (and his band), rock god Eric Clapton, and the great traditionalists B.B. King and Buddy Guy all play the blues. That sort of diversity proves how flexible, adaptable, and universal the blues is. It doesn’t matter if you feel like crying in your beverage, listening thoughtfully, singing along, or dancing the jitterbug, you can find a blues format for any mood and occasion.

      When Muddy Waters famously said, “The blues had a baby and they called it rock ’n’ roll,” he was both chronologically as well as metaphorically correct: Of all the popular forms of American music, blues was the first.

      The pieces of blues that made the genre

      The music that draws on the subjects of misfortune, infidelity, and bad karma for its inspiration pretty much sums up the blues. The great W.C. Handy, known as the father of the blues, once said that the blues were conceived in an aching heart, but it’s pretty hard to tell what kind of guitar playing is appropriate for an ailing ventricle. However, you can identify certain common characteristics that help define blues guitar — including song structure, harmony, scales, and phrasing techniques. You can study and master these elements to create this special form of music that expresses a special kind of sorrow in song — special because it’s not completely without hope, humor, irony, useful life philosophies, and, dare I say it, some joy. That’s the blues for you.

       Woke up this mornin’ and I’m feelin’ so blue.

       Woke up this mornin’ and I’m feelin’ so blue.

       My baby left me and I don’t know what to do.

      Believe it or not, that’s the format that started it all. If you can think of a blues song — such as “Kansas City” or “Hound Dog” or “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” — you see that the formula applies.

      The place of the blues’ conception

      The blues was born in the southern United States out of the African American experience in the fields and work camps that sprung up in the late 19th and early 20th century. Though many parallel developments took place, the most important growth occurred in a very specific part of the southern United States — the region in the state of Mississippi known as the Delta.

      

The “Delta” in Delta blues describes not the Mississippi River Delta, which is in southern Louisiana, but a vast alluvial plain a couple hundred miles to the north in northwest СКАЧАТЬ