Setting your Blues lyrics to music is easier than you think. For one
thing, you can just chant the words with rhythmic, back-beat hand clapping
and have a pretty good time. But for the ultimate experience, involve your
music teacher. The Blues are easy to fake, and at this point in history
they are an indelible part of our collective musical subconscious. But, in
case you are out of touch with that part of your subconscious, there follows
a brief primer on the standard twelve-bar Delta Blues shuffle.
Blues are a very specific American art form that came about when African
musical traditions collided with European musical traditions. Harmonically,
the music is marked by Major/Dominant-Seventh chords (non-musicians can
safely skip the rest of this sentence) and by the flatted Third scale
member in the melody, which effectively pits a minor feel in the melody
against the major feel of the harmony. This gives the Blues it's own
particular feel. The reason that the music seems to be at odds with itself in this way, is
that it comes from two cultures, and partakes of two ways of creating and
understanding music. European chord structures (based on our seven note Diatonic scale) are overlain by a Minor Pentatonic melody (based on an African
five note scale). Slamming these elements together makes this the only musical
form in the world where every chord in the music can be a
Dominant-Seventh. (Non-musicians can safely ignore the last two sentences!)
If we write out these competing scales, we begin to see the nature of the
conflict, and if you play them, you can hear the difference, too.
The standard western, or European major scale in the key of E:
E F# G# A B C# D# [ E...].
The Minor Pentatonic scale, beginning on E:
E G A B D [E...]. If you have flexible Orff Instruments available, you can lay out only the
five notes in the Minor Pentatonic scale, hand any kid the mallets and
you will hear that they can't play a wrong note in a standard blues progression! If you play a straight
twelve bar blues progression (non-musicians.....take a little break...;-):
I - IV - I - I , IV - IV - I - I , V - IV - I - V
using Dominant-Seventh chords, anyone can solo over the vamp and
sound like B. B. King (on a xylophone, of course)! If you don't have flexible instruments available to you, you can simply put
colored tape on the correct keys of a piano, or under the correct strings
of a hammer dulcimer or zither-type instrument and you're still in
business.
[NOTE: This is extremely fun. DON'T RUSH THROUGH THIS.
And please don't be precious with the mallets and only let your "talented" students
play. This is one of those moments in the classroom where everybody can win. If need be you can re-visit this
activity over a few class periods to guarantee that everyone has a fair shot at it.]