12 Bar - Pentatonic scales and patterns.


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I am probly going to get my a-- kicked for this but I have found just playing the blues to be very easy.

Get a book or even better, a good teacher and learn to play what you like. I found that playing songs that I liked became easy to play.

You're lucky ... my boot does not reach from Europe to the US.
Technically, the Blues is easy, but it's not easy to put all the emotion into your playing that make something Blues.

Stefan that is my feeling exactly. To just play the 12 bar blues is a piece of cake. And that is what I was refering to when I make that statement.

To play THE blues is a whole different thing. You must feel, live, beath, eat, and be the blues. The real stuff; the good stuff not everybody can play. That stuff comes from the hear and the soul.

Sorry if there was a misunderstanding.

Daniel,
I have always thought Blues is like Chess...Easy to learn, real hard to master.

Later,
Eric

Well...I dont know much of neither of them, but I believe your comparison is very good. One common thing I know is that you really have to concentrate! Many people let the easier technical part of blues deceive, but if you give less than 100% in playing blues, the result is blues licks, not blues. I must admit I dont think I can play "real blues", in a good day I sound like an average "bluesman-wannabe", and in a bad day like a guitarist who has learned pentatonic scale two weeks ago and learned all his (dont start the 3rd person-thing again people) blues knowledge from Yngwie Malmsteens "Hendrix-style" songs. By the way (and off the topic again!) chess is something I would like to learn some day, I read some basic concepts couple of years ago and know something (not much) of the chess history of 19th century, but as far as actual playing goes, I know the rules and thats basically it...its mind-boggling game, but its theory is more close to jazz than blues! Isnt it odd when people write books with 300+ pages of one single move in certain variation of certain opening? I dont think even people like Chris, Jon, Frederick, Stefan, Charles etc could write 300+ pages of the "single note BB King played in the intro in the beginning of the Zaire concert 1974"! (:

I'm not going to try ... but 300 pages ... John, Cary that would mean a lot of points, wouldn't it?

**WARNING**
"punk music is as easy to f**k up as it is to play" dont be fooled by the easy punk technique, it may be easy to play but its hard to play good............

I was a punk band when I was in high school. We're talking the late '70s.

It wasn't as easy as it looked.

We wrote a lot of really crappy songs. We sounded like crap. A lot of fast strumming, quick chord changes, screaming and yelling.

We never played that crap in public. We waited until we got better.

The ironic thing is, the punk stuff I often hear coming out of my step-son's room these days -- it sounds just like the crap my old band rejected.

This was the whole point about punk - it was supposed to be easy.
Three chords (or less), no solos (other than tongue-in-cheek "anti-solos" of one or two notes), and straight 4/4 rhythms played as fast and as loud as you could.
The point - in the 70s days of ageing rock gods and over-produced pop pap - was to prove anybody could get up on stage and make music, have fun, etc. It had to be minimal, or it wasn't punk. Energy, immediacy and youth were the main criteria.

Obviously once you started learning guitar, then you realised (if you had some intelligence and/or curiosity) that this music stuff had quite a lot more to it... So you learnt a few more chords, maybe some scales... Hey presto, you weren't a punk rocker any more.

There was at least one band (in the UK anyway) who were conscious enough of this conundrum (how to stay a punk band when you get too good) that they swapped instruments when they got too proficient on their first one.

This doesn't mean all punk is crap. Good punk bands are tight rhythmically, energetic and committed. It doesn't matter if their songs are simple, as long as they get the point across, and are unpretentious. Pretension was the main enemy of the punks. "Street cred" was what it was about, not getting out of touch with your roots. The music was a direct response to the players' environment and situation.

Now, punk is just one more vintage style of rock music, like metal or blues or whatever. It has stylistic rules.
But there's a similar argument about punk as there is with blues: can you play real punk music if you're not a punk to start with? Does it matter if you're just pretending?

JonR

In a recent Jacob Dylan article I read, Dylan talked about how difficult he found it to write compelling, interesting three chord songs. It's much easier, he said, to write songs using a variety of non-major chords.

Three chords offer a really limited pallatte. It doesn't surpise me that a writer like Dylan finds it difficult to express himself in a way that is fresh and interesting in that format.

Anybody can smash together three chords, but it takes a much more creative mind to write something like "Anarchy in the U.K." (the Sex Pistols) or "White Riot" (the Clash) than it does to write some of the dronning, rapid fire noise many so called punk bands create today (or many LA punk bands created in the early '80s).

The Ramones are another band that really demonstrated how invigorating such simple formula could be, but even for them, the well eventually ran dry.

Another factor in writing credible punk songs is to have something to write about. One of the problems many white, middle class American guys run into is that outside of the typical teen angst born more of being spoiled, they have nothing, really, to complain about. And their life observations are of a rather limited spectrum. The New York and London teens of the mid to late '70s were really dissaffected from society and given the econmic reality of the time had no reason to hope for much of a working life. Most white middle class teens in the U.S. live far too comfortably and have too many advantages to really have much to whine about. It took an incredibly dysfunctional childhood and truly wacked out parenting -- not economic hardship -- to create America's most inspired punk, meaning, of course, Kurt Cobain.

That's not to say teens today shouldn't form and play in punk bands, if that's what turns them on. But I'm not sure most teens today really know what punk is. They think it's just about making noise and acting angry. They don't understand or appreciate the whole punk ethic.

As for old punks ... Sure, if you're a punk, once you start becoming more proficient guitar player, your art starts maturing in subtle and distinct ways. But once a punk, always a punk. I can't tell you about how many retro swing bands, rockabilly bands, alt. country bands, roots blues bands, etc. I've read about that have members who profess to have first played in a punk band. It's a common theme. Once a punk, you never loose that DIY attitude, and I honestly believe that's really a better place to be as a musician.

Howard, when did you become the establishment that so many of us were against?
You had a good point, but you lost me when you said that, for the most part, I (upper middle class, spoiled white boy) have nothing to complain about. Yes, there is teen angst, but there is far more that you, as an adult, seem to have forgotten about.
I've addressed this issue in a post before because I fit the stereotype of what you're talking about, so I feel it gives me a right to speak.
There is so much going on with kids these days that parents have no idea about. The world is changing faster than it ever has before.

While I can say that there is no 60's or 70's type of musical 'love' vibe happening now and the government is not the topic of any popular protest songs you'll hear on the radio. And the songs that you hear on the radio are, for the most part, meaningless drivel written by people who couldn't carry a tune in a bucket so they send them out for the 'faces' to sing. But there is something happening here. There isn't only what you see on MTV. There is so much more. What you see on television DOES NOT represent what is going on in 'real life'.

In this line of thinking, how did Eric Clapton or even Stevie Ray create such mind blowing blues? I mean SRV was at least from Texas, but EC was from England.
BUT, can't I play the blues? I've never lived in the delta nor have I known racial oppression. But I know my blues. Just like I know my punk, my jazz, my country, my rock and my pop. I know how to take what I'm feeling and put it into a form that lets me express myself. I don't need a government sending me and my friends to war to know that I'm not happy with the system as it is now. I don't need to be told I can't shop in the same store as my white friends to know that life isn't always fair.

So, for the most part I agree with what you're saying about having something to write about. But once you start saying "you have nothing to complain about" you yourself have become part of the something to complain about...

John

Good points.

Part of my thinking, of course, is colored by the paradigm of having a step-son who has every economic and social advantage in the world yet is throwing it all away because he's bought into the phoney rebellion he's sold.

I see a lot of me in him, or visa versa. When I was his age I rebelled and became angry and sullen and dissaffected. But against what? My mom and dad who would do anything for me and gave me a great home? Or was it the high school I attended with some of the best teachers in the county? Or was it the beautiful San Diego weather? What the hell did I have to be angry about?

And, like me, my step son is dropping out of high school. That was a terrible mistake I made that has had economic consquences my entire life (I make now what I should have made 10 years ago, for example). I've been running to catch up ever since.

I don't know, maybe there are pressures that teens today face that I can't relate to, but beyond a seemingly greater societal proclivity toward violence today, I'm not sure I know what they are. I don't think the sexual or drug tempations are any greater. Teens were no more trusted then than today. When I was a teen, it was much harder to get a job (any job) than it is for a teen today. Even with recent economic downturns, the economic future has never been brighter for any teen who wants to put in the work necessary to succeed. Teen's today didn't grow up with the constant threat of nuclear anniliation that I grew up with. They don't even know what "duck and cover" means.

As I alluded to with Kurt Cobain, there are certainly individuals who have suffered (and are suffering) far more than I would ever want to face, but my generalization that the average teen really doesn't have it that rough still doesn't seem far off the mark.

And to punk this into context -- I'm talking about having something to say that is going to create relevant punk rock as art, not just scream about how f-----up everything is.

Of course, you make a valid point about Clapton and the like. Any real artist is going to have the depth to tap into whatever emotions are available and universalize them in ways mere mortals like myself can only envy. Clapton may not be the best example because he has, throughout his life, known as much real pain as any delta bluesman. But the point is, a great artist can take the depression of having your team loose the World Series and channel that negative energy into a great song about losing your wife and your job on the same day. But that's the exception, not the rule.

So, in this rather rambling and mixed up post, I guess I agree and disagree with what you say.