LISTEN HEAR
“Anyone can
play blues.
You just have
to do a lot of
listening.”
The basic scale the blues came from is an Af-
rican music scale. It only has five notes but all
those notes are sliding notes. Same thing with
the Indian scale; same thing with Arabic mu-
sic. A funny thing is almost all ghetto music’s
are basically very similar in scale and musical
structure. And I do mean all ghetto music – be
it Greek music, Indian music, Arabian music,
Afghanistan music, African music, Israeli music.
All of these things have one thing in common:
they have the same sort of American blues
scale. There is no one real blues scale. Blue
notes are these notes so often (plays) which
are basically the notes in your scale are consid-
ered the blue notes. But there are other blues
notes and other blues scales.
MAY / JUNE
Blues is basically a vocal music not an instru-
mental music. And the best blues players play
their instruments real vocally so it sounds like
a human voice. That’s why you use slides and
things that can emulate the facility, the slide
the human voice has. Because the voice can
slide up anywhere it wants too.
When this music style first started in this coun-
try 200 years ago, a little more than that, there
was very little to work with as far as the scale.
There was one scale five notes long. Each note
could be changed and altered and the regis-
ter lowered. But black people in this country at
that time, who brought their music with them,
ran into American music, which was really En-
glish music, hymns, and Protestant music. It
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