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How do you define blues music?

How do you define blues music?

A style of music that evolved from southern African-American secular songs and is usually distinguished by a strong 4/4 rhythm, flatted thirds and sevenths, a 12-bar structure, and lyrics in a three-line stanza in which the second line repeats the first: “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and …

How can you identify blues music?

4 Answers

  1. Make use of the blues scale.
  2. Have simple arrangements centred around guitar, piano, and voice.
  3. use fairly simple chord progressions, most typically the 12-bar blues chord progression.
  4. lyrically, emphasise themes of hardship and struggle.

What are the 5 characteristics that distinguish the blues in rock music?

Characteristics that blues rock adopted from electric blues include its dense texture, basic blues band instrumentation, rough declamatory vocal style, heavy guitar riffs, string-bending blues-scale guitar solos, strong beat, thick riff-laden texture, and posturing performances.

What are the characteristics of rhythm and blues?

Characteristics of R&B include soulful singing over a strong backbeat, commonalities in rhythm, bands divided into a rhythm and horn section, repetition of rhythms, verses and notes, and often complex blending of instruments…

What blues means?

1 : low spirits : melancholy suffering a case of the blues. 2 : a song often of lamentation characterized by usually 12-bar phrases, 3-line stanzas in which the words of the second line usually repeat those of the first, and continual occurrence of blue notes in melody and harmony.

What is the purpose of the blues?

Blues is an African-American music that traverses a wide range of emotions and musical styles. “Feeling blue” is expressed in songs whose verses lament injustice or express longing for a better life and lost loves, jobs, and money. But blues is also a raucous dance music that celebrates pleasure and success.

Why are blues called blues?

The name of this great American music probably originated with the 17th-century English expression “the blue devils,” for the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. Shortened over time to “the blues,” it came to mean a state of agitation or depression.

What is difference between blues and jazz?

Blues involves guitar, bass, piano, harmonica, drums, saxophone, vocals, trumpet, trombone, and sometimes fiddle. Jazz involves a guitar, piano, bass, saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, drums, and tuba. Jazz is usually instrumental, while Blues almost always contains lyrics.

What is the difference between blues and rhythm and blues?

One way to think of it is that the blues is essentially a vocal music, while R&B is more instrumental—​but the real way to think of it is this: It’s a good song, or it’s not a good song.”

What are characteristics of pop music?

They have a good rhythm, a catchy melody, and are easy to remember and sing along to. They usually have a chorus that’s repeated several times and two or more verses. Most pop songs are between two and five minutes long, and the lyrics are usually about the joys and problems of love and relationships.

How would you describe the blues?

The blues has a distinct melancholic and somber tone, which is achieved through vocal techniques such as melisma, rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” guitar strings on the neck or applying a metal slide to the guitar strings to create a whining voicelike sound.

What is the difference between blues and soul music?

Blues music needs to have some kind of pattern/rhythm and places more importance on the instruments, whereas soul is more “loose” and “free” like gospel music? Both are ’emotion-based’, but soul can be positive and uplifting at times, while blues is mostly “sad” and sticks to the minor notes?