playing the blues,

Somehow perhaps the simplest form of music, 12 bars, 3 chords, one Blues scale... But doing it is a whole different story. It is a short blog I ask you to do, to try something. A blog although it will take some time to complete the assignment:

Drummers, play 2 bars of Blues on one cymbal, one stick, one cymbal, Bass players play 2 bars on a bass, piano or any other instrument do the same thing, just a groove, just time. 

After this go to our History Page and watch and listen to “The History Of The Blues” It will take you about an hour and a half. 

Then go back to your instrument, start playing two bars of blues and it will be Different and not a little bit different and I tell you that even getting up your guitar or sticks will be a new experience. 

Just do it. It's the key of playing music, listen, understand, go deeper into it. Get the Sound in your ears, the groove and timing, not to mention the stories behind it. 

My experience is that after seeing those documentaries I wanted to play everything in a kind of blues sound. I even tried 'Autumn Leaves', 'Blue Bossa' and the 3/4 Disney Tune "Someday My Prince Will Come" and turned it into a more bluesy sound. Since then I often play the latter in 12/8.

It doesn't make you a Blues musician in one fingersnap but at least you will connect better, deeper or with more respect to the core of this style.

This is one of the reasons we started this history page, to quickly and easily get in touch with essential thoughts, ideas and the people behind them. There could be a vocal or instrumental approach to the blues I guess. Like someone singing or a more abstract way of pushing your instrument and all the possibilities into it. I see that more repetition of single notes or syllables can be added with a more vocal approach. You can find more information about chords, lines and originals about Blues on the website, have a look around. Go to the Documentaries part I and II

To practise timing I play a blues in a sort of complete random form I'll try to make a video about this a little later.