Fred Pool | 
| 
Antti, I want to kick off some discussion about blues here. My band mates are eager to get any input from a guy like you...a guy who's played the blues for enough years...even played it in both hemispheres.
There's something about blues that I just can't seem to make sense of. My fellow guitar teachers and I had a long talk tonight about it after our students left and...blues is so freaking weird. It doesn't fit into our way of nailing down music...it just breaks so many rules. It's got me pulling my hair out to want to hammer it down!
You know, the way it bends from major to minor is a big deal. As a group, we haven't actually spend a whole lot of time playing the blues together. We have so much else going on. We do recognize its importance, though and have decided to give it the attention it deserves.
But teaching it is funny. It doesn't fit normal rules without breaking them right after making them...so I finally just started going through classic blues licks.
Blues seems to be a lot about knowing classic licks and throwing them in all over the place...blending them together and weaving in and out of them. Of course, so much fun comes from how playfully you put them together and what you do in between licks.
It has to be the most expressive music I know. My bandmates and I would really like to hear how you feel about the blues. Please share and maybe we'll kick off something worth reading here for ourselves and our students.
How did you hear about us? -Aliens
16 February 2005 06:02am - Grants Pass, OR
