Country Blues > Country Blues Licks and Lessons

Unusual intervals in country blues

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Gmaj7:

--- Quote from: Johnm on November 19, 2017, 11:40:32 AM ---Hi Wax,
It seems like the original poster's search was for bII notes in the sung melody, so if that note (or a #I note) was in the harmony but not in the melody it would not count for his purposes.  This would exclude a lot of turn-arounds or walk-ups and walk-downs where you pass through that note in the bass line or an interior line but against a diatonic note being sung in the melody.
All best,
Johnm

--- End quote ---

Hi John, yes I'm also curious about it being played as part of an instrumental melody, i.e. on the treble strings. If it's part of a walk up or turnaround it's main use is for chromatic purposes and I think that's clear to the listener.

Johnm:
Hi Gmaj7,
If you want to find such an out-of-the-way and specific sound, you're just going to have to listen to everything.  You might start with Walter Davis and Robert Pete Williams, both of whom employed expanded and more unusual harmonies and melodic vocabularies than are most often encountered in Country Blues playing and singing.  Let us know if you find it.
All best,
Johnm

Johnm:
Hi all,
Wiley Barner sings an unusual interval in his "My Gal Treats Me Mean (But I Can't Leave Her Alone), a major VII note.  This is despite his pianist hitting the more commonly encountered bVII note in his solo version of the song's melody.  Here is a video of the performance--listen to the notes Barner sings on "Take your pic-ture make it, in the frame . . .".  I apologize if non-U.S. Weenies are unable to view this video.



All best,
Johnm

Gmaj7:
I happened on a paper called "Emotional responses to Hindustani raga music: the role of musical structure" and to cut to the chase, one conclusion was "Finally, one of the most interesting findings of our study was the association of the minor second with ‘tensed’ emotion. This is distinct from past work in Western classical music that has shown an association for the minor third with sadness in Western music "

(Think of a raga as like a mode, but with more stipulations - different ascending and descending patterns, characteristic patterns of notes, some notes more strongly emphasised than others. Microtones exist but are generally excluded in analysis).

Not mentioned in the conclusion, but shown earlier in the paper, is that that the minor-sixth is another interval that is strongly predictive of a sad or tensed emotion in the listener. The minor third, curiously (and for me, unexpectedly) did not really have such strong predictive value. Whereas in the opposite direction (meaning towards "happy"), the major third was important but just as important was the major second.
That gives the second interval the strongest position, because it being either major or minor seems to be the single interval which changes most significantly the emotional response to a raga.

That is interesting because in western music, and as we've seen above, the minor second rarely shows up at all, so western listeners don't have much chance to become familiar with it, and also composers (including in the Blues) have little opportunity to capitalise on it.

(For reference, this paper was building on older papers which demonstrated that people even completely unfamiliar with Indian ragas have fairly predictable/uniform emotional repsonses to different ragas. The newer paper used a larger sample size with 42% of the listeners completely unfamiliar or only slightly familiar with Indian classical music - so the majority of the listeners were familiar with Indian music. I guess that could skew things a little).

Johnm:
Hi all,
One place where consecutive minor seconds occur in the blues with a fair degree of frequency (and a great deal of frequency, for some players) is between the IV and V notes of the blues scale, where quite often a #IV/bV note is added to the scale which bridges the gap between IV and V and thus creates the potential for consecutive minor seconds in either ascending or descending lines. Check out Bo Carter's and Lil' Son Jackson's playing in DGDGBE tuning, where their playing abounds in lines played on the second string that sound the first, second and third frets in both ascending and descending order.
Similarly, the bVI note is perhaps not common in blues, but occurs in almost any song that has a minor IV chord, like Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Wartime Blues", or Blind Boy Fuller's "Weeping Willow Blues", in both of which it occurs in the melody every time the song goes to its IV chord.
All best,
Johnm

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