How to write the blues?

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
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Stamped Records wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 2:04 pm I'm looking for a few suggestions as to where or how I can find the feeling in the notes posts, so that I can explore it myself.
Yeah, blues is about feeling...
I'm sure you will soon feel de_blues...
:wink:



:hihi:

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get married
get divorced
get shot at
find your dog dead

it's similar to country but with more groove.

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Its like talent .... you got it, or you don't.

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First I must sound like a cliche: You don’t “write” the blues, you feel it, sing it and play it. Just like the slaves found it at the bottom of their heart in their worst age of suffering. If you cannot feel this human thing: suffering, despair, sorrow but also acceptance, strenght, resistance, hope, joy and rebirth, you are lost and ain’t gonna make any blues ever, even though you do your chords and scales. However, if you know these darker and deeper side of existence, you have the key to your blues.

That said, when I learned it, we did not have easy internet entries though I wish we had. Instead we had big textbooks about several styles of music from which we had to extract the basics ourselves. Here are a few entries for overview I wish I had. From this point, you can always dig deeper into the theoretical affair. If you cannot express your authentic blues with these basic tricks, I think the problem is that you don’t got the blues, and then you should leave it at that. And that is well meant. Blues is not a cookie recipe. Blues is the shadow of your soul.

https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Blues

http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/blues-definition/

http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/blues-scale-blue-note/

http://hubguitar.com/music-theory/blues ... and-theory

https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guita ... opic=50470

http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2011/the-blues-scale/

Cheers
Last edited by IncarnateX on Sat Mar 30, 2019 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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Yeah, well more “Rhythm and Blues” than blues ^^^^ compared to the roots I have in mind. But as Aretha illustrates, blues is about life. Reality. No joke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Vk6m6pqt8

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Cheers guys, I guess I get what is being said, you don't study the blues. The fact that I don't play an instrument could make it tricky for me to ever feel it, but one can only persist.

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how about a compromise, pick yourself a cheap set of harps (harmonicas) and learn some blues cross harp. You can pretty much practice anywhere and you might develop a feel...even better you might like it
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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Just for fun a couple of serious remarks, which most of us know, but which may not reach the OP, because of his unfortunate attitude (he "hasn't time to learn things, because of he writes EDM" - what a joke).

Start with the idea of the blue note. Those are microtonals, something between western 12 scale, e.g. between 2, b3, and 3, or 4, b5 and 5.

Blues can have kind of oriental approach in that sense.

The hexatonic, or six-note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the ♭5th degree of the original heptatonic scale. This added note can be spelled as either a ♭5 or a ♯4.

Create your melody around notes 1, 2 ♭3, (♯4)/♭5, 6 ♭7, 8

Use seventh, nine/sharp nine, minor six chords (or anything, which sounds good, its all about the feeling). Don't stick with I-IV-V.

Listen to Bessie Smith St. Louis Blues or Charlie Patton Bottleneck slide Blues. Or "white-washed" Americano type Gershwin, or Kern - Hamnerstein. All geat.

Not to mention all country-blended, folk-blended, rock-blended shit after those.

Improvise.

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Stamped Records wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:37 pm The fact that I don't play an instrument could make it tricky for me to ever feel it, but one can only persist.
Or learn to play an instrument maybe?

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thecontrolcentre wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:35 pm
Stamped Records wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:37 pm The fact that I don't play an instrument could make it tricky for me to ever feel it, but one can only persist.
Or learn to play an instrument maybe?
I am learning, but as a composer, it's not my priority to go off and play other people's music.

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Good luck with that ...

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Harry_HH wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:27 pm Just for fun a couple of serious remarks, which most of us know, but which may not reach the OP, because of his unfortunate attitude (he "hasn't time to learn things, because of he writes EDM"

You've read far too much into the OP brother. I never said EDM, and I never said I haven't time to learn things. I said, I have no time to learn an instrument, 'well'. It would suit you better to ponder what the word 'well' means in this sentence, instead of making false inferences.

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Stamped Records wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 12:03 pm I'm an electronic composer so i haven't got time to learn to play an instrument well.
Why are you in a hurry like that. This is what's wrong with the whole "electronic musician", Producah mentality.
Why do you feel you are ready to be a composer? You should get ten years under you, maybe make little idiomatic things along the way, get your feet wet as you go, and rearrange extant music. Reality check needed: your music will always suffer from this lack.
Stamped Records wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:45 pm
thecontrolcentre wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:35 pm
Stamped Records wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:37 pm The fact that I don't play an instrument could make it tricky for me to ever feel it, but one can only persist.
Or learn to play an instrument maybe?
I am learning, but as a composer, it's not my priority to go off and play other people's music.
It bloody well should be at this point, because you aren't going to happen in a vacuum or invent your technique ex nihilo.

With no touch, what do you expect to feel? You don't have to become a virtuoso but you undermine yourself from the start with a qualifier 'well' as an excuse, and to compound this you feel you can just bypass playing other people's music. You have no clue as to what *composers* do to prepare themselves. If it isn't a priority to become a musician first, you're barking up the wrong tree.

You can't learn to swim by reading about it.
Last edited by jancivil on Sat Mar 30, 2019 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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"Stamped Records"...? Garrix? Is that You?

Also for your Blues thing Chief, go to Logic - Chord Trigger - Multi - Keyboard Voicing's - Blues Right Hand/ Blues Left Hand.

BOOM.
The post above this is likely bait, viewer discretion is advised.

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