In this Guitar Musings lesson, I take Keith Wyatt's "Blues in A" solo as a starting point for discussing the ambiguous nature of the blues as a music genre. I chose Keith's brilliant solo because it showcases many aspects of the blues guitar, and is a good starting point to take a look at the uniqueness of the blues.
I compare music to another favourite topic of mine -- food. While in the traditional European approach food is broadly divided into two groups: savoury and desserts, in the more cosmopolitan world we see many cuisines where salty and sweet flavours are mixed freely.
Similarly, traditional European music divides songs into those belonging to the major tonality an those belonging to the minor tonality. However, in the blues, major and minor are freely intermixed, giving it its unique flavour.
Blues is all about teasing the ear to try and nail the tonality -- is it a major or a minor piece? Keith's solo illustrates that perfectly. While the backing harmony stays completely ambiguous (no major or minor intervals get played during the riff), the solo lines weave freely in and out of the major and minor feel. That contributes to the magnificent tease, the tension and release that propels the music into the stratosphere.
Firstly, I must apologize to Keith for butchering his brilliant solo in this video; I've only learned it the day before, and definitely am not in the position to come nowhere close to his fantastic playing. But I felt like it's a great way to start the lesson and lead it into the discussion on the ambiguity of the blues.
Another correction: I erroneously mentioned that it was at the beginning of the 21st century that we started hearing this new way of mixing the major and minor tonalities in the blues; what I meant to say is that it was at the beginning of the 20th century that such approach got popularized and swelled into the 20th century unique music corpus. I was merely 100 years off. Oops!
In the next lessons I will take a closer look into the structure of the blues with regards to playing single lines over typical blues chord progressions.
Thanks for watch, send me your comments, and stay tuned!
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