Re: [Harp-L] Blues at SPAH

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

The main blues jam runs at night after the shows, in a big circle in the ballroom,with solos (usually either one or two choruses0  going in order around the circle. Buzz Krantz ran it for several years, but for awhile now it's been Joe Filisko. Backing consists of a few quietly amplified guitars, sometimes with string bass and brushes on a snare - tasty, supportive and inobtrusive - Joe is a stickler on that point. 


Most of the tunes are 12-bar blues, usually with a shuffle feel (note quite the same as 12/8,, a bit more fluid as the middle of the triplet is seldom expressed, and the two outside notes may or may not feel like a strict division of the beat in 3), occasionally with a straight 8 or even 16th note feel. Sometimes somebody sings the tune, but instrumentals dominate.


Minor blues will come up occasionally (such as Sonny Boy Williamson II's Help Me, always a favorite). Blues keys tend to be guitar open-string keys such as E, A,D, and G, but C and F also do come up, as both are popular blues keys; other keys are rarer.

Winslow

 
Winslow Yerxa
Author, Harmonica For Dummies ISBN 978-0-470-33729-5
Harmonica instructor, The Jazzschool for Music Study and Performance
Resident expert, bluesharmonica.com
Columnist, harmonicasessions.com


________________________________
 From: Toni Macaroni <macaroni9999@xxxxxxxxx>
To: harp-L <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 11:41 PM
Subject: [Harp-L] Blues at SPAH
 
Hi

Although I have never been to SPAH in the past I intend to be there this
year. I would like to do a lot of playing at SPAH - jazz, bluegrass, blues.
I have been working on jazz and bluegrass mostly but its my guess that
there is a lot of blues jams happen at SPAH - formal and informal. Which
brings me to my question and reason for this post: What can you tell me
about the most frequently played types of blues at SPAH? For example: Is at
mostly I-IV-V 12 bar blues? Is it mostly 12/8 shuffle? Is it mostly in the
key of Bb? Stuff like that.

Any help appreciated.