Re: Get me going on the blues - 25yrs

["Bob Maglinte" <bbqbob917@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

- ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Crowley" <Mark.Crowley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bbqbob917@xxxxxxxxxxx>; <harplicks@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: Get me going on the blues - 25yrs


I am not near my cds now but after reading this the first tune that popped
in my head was Muddy Waters 'King Bee' -a sort of barrelhouse swing - is
this in the style you mean?

so you set yr riffs from the 2 and 4 beats - leaving the 1 and 3 either bare
or quieter in yr playing?

I had often wondered why the harmonica players on my Muddy cds didn't seem
to be too 'busy' with their playing - even though they were pretty monster
harmonica players... is it because they would have been following this and
thinking more about the little they did play - observing rhythm over notes?

sorry for my confusion

crowley


Hi,of
In a round about way, it is basically it, but what you need to remember is
that in a 4 beat measure, 1 and 3 in this order are the strongest beats in
the measure, and 2 and 4 are the weakest, so  what it comes down to is that
you're emphasizing the weak beats, which are the back beats, and in most
African American musics, the snare drum is almost ALWAYS off the 2 and the
4. In a lot of white music genres, it's just the opposite. 1 and 3 have very
immediate impact, but if you smack on it too much, like most rock musicians
do, it eventually loses its sense of immediacy. Even though there are very
strong melodic concepts in African American musics, rhythm takes on a FAR
stronger role than with most white music genres as a general rule, so that
means the phrase absolutely MUST fit the groove, so you play with and iff
it, as opposed to white musicians usually playing over it. In my
expoerience, white music bands are built from the top down, that being leads
first, rhythm dead last, and African American music bands are just the
opposite. In many white music bands, REGARDLESS of genre, the rhythm section
usually tends to be the weakest part of the band, and with African American
bands, the reverse is true.

Mark, your confusion is really very typical of a large number of white
musicians when it comes to playing African American music. Again, this is an
observation and not a diss, The one Austrailian musician who is well known
here in the USA, IMO typifies this is Dave Hole. Since he plays off the 1
quite a bit, and is playing often ahead of the beat, his playing sounds very
rushed and overly busy, and very rock like in concept. Learning to play off
the  and the 4 as well as behind the beat will show you how to make space
and tension building work for you, so you need as little as 1 or 2 notes to
get the point across, and James Cotton, as Magic Dick once pointed out in an
interview some 10 years ago, was an absolute master of this.

One thing I've learned over the years that if the band has a strong rhythm
section (and this is NOT based on the solos they play), it will make a
mediocre lead section sound great,and a poor rhythm section will easily
expose a weak lead section's faults. It's no wonder why a blues album can be
recorded in the studio in as little as 1 day, but rock records often take as
much as 6 months to 1-2 years, because the way they're recorded is with a
vocal reference track, and a rhythm track, and a minimum of 2 weeks is
usually spent in the studio on it, based on a BARE minimum amount of
tweaking, because if the groove us crap, the whole band is crap, regardless
of how great the solos are.

It's easier to learn how to play behind the beat by first learning to play
more off the 2 and the 4, because there's a more natural flow that makes
this stuff work, and although there are some exceptions, playing off the 1
almost always forces you to gravitate towards playing on top or ahead of the
beat, which then too often translates into overplaying when it comes to
blues.

Hope this will be of help to you.

Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA