Blues

Blues music originated back in the days of the slave trade where they would sing soulfully about the way they were treated and their day. It was a way of expressing feeling and bringing people together through a common experience and emotions. Oliver (1960, p. 2) states that 'attempts to commit the music to musical notation had been made' but this was not necessary for Blues music due to it being focused on emotion and having a lot more freedom then other genres of Music.  There are different key features of Blues music. The first of these being the 12 bar blues which is a chord progression and is based on the I-IV-V chords of a scale. From this chord sequence often a walking bass is created which often appears in Blues music. Another key feature is adaptation of the voice to create a soulful vocal tone to reflect the origins of what they were going through. There is also a lot of repetition involving call and response which is something we took forward as a group when composing our own Blues piece.

https://soundcloud.com/musicianship-1/playin-the-blues-1

To create our Blues piece at first we decided on the topic that we would explore. We decided on a person's everyday journey and what they'd come across, so we related it to us and our day so far. For example lyric wise we used 'Abi's hedgehog slippers, are missing an eye' as this related to our situation we were in. We used the key feature of repetition by following a an ABB structure throughout the song repeating certain phrases or certain words like 'slippers' and 'eye' which I thought was effective as this was similar to the call and response from original Blues and the idea of an current everyday situation which also helped us to compose. It also added a Blues Gospel feel when we'd echo alongside the claps to add a bit of percussion. A lot of our devising came from improvisation and people singing about what had happened to them and/or how they were feeling. This enabled us to have a verse each and made it appropriate to us as a group, which made it easier to come up with.

Structure Brainstorm

In this rehearsal we worked on coming up with a structure for our song that we are going to compose to fit our brief. For our brief we need to come up with either and arrangement or and original that would fit into the 1920s and 30s. For our group in particular, a comedic Musical Theatre number based around a couple who went to a casino to seek out their fortune and when the girl wins she doesn't want the boy anymore, but in the end she loses it all and he wins. We decided to focus on the point in the story where she has just won all the money and doesn't want the boy anymore as we thought this would be the point that we were most likely to be able to make funny and fit the brief.

We are wanting the first section of the song to be quite slow and sexy therefore we decided on having a piano solo at the beginning.Then to communicate the character we are going to have sultry singing where she is teasing the boy to set up the start of the story and to contrast with the next bit where the tempo will pick up into the chorus. This section needs to be quite tongue and cheek so we've decided to play off pick up line but changing them into insults which will add an element of comedy to fit the brief given. Throughout the song we are wanting to keep jumping between these two sections to keep the piece constantly engaging and still be appropriate to the genre given. The upbeat section is going to progress into comedic anger to give the song height and a change in emotion. The roles we will have is Abi will play the piano, Amy and Meg will sing the girl's part and Yahya will be the voice of the male.