Here is your opportunity to show me everything you have learned about how you can creatively compose a blues accompaniment. Make sure you read the questions carefully.

What is a blues accompaniment in a band?

What part in blues music does this instrument play?

What pitches can you add to a walking bass line to make it sound stylistic to blues?

What is vamping on the piano in blues music?

Composing a stylish blues accompaniment

﻿Hi everyone. I'm Ms. Friar and I'm really excited to be your music teacher for lesson 11 in our unit three, blues unit. Right now, we're going to go straight in with singing different blues style structures. Repeating after me. Call and response. And then I'm going to ask you a few questions. We're going to hum. So just as a quick, warm up, can you make sure you take in lots of air and then we're going to hum. So we're going to do it like a big curve. You'll go. Good, let's go the other way. We're going to go. And Good. Now we made some city noises and I've waved my hands about. Let's do the first one. Two types of blues style singing and we're just going to hum it. I'm going to have a phrase, you're going to hum it back. Pay attention to the phrases 'cause then I'm going to ask you a questions about their structure. Here we go. First phrase. Me first, then you sing back. Your go. good. You're go. My go. Your go. My go. Okay, lovely humming. Were you paying attention to the pitches of the phrases? There were four of them. We have looked at phrases in blues singing structures before and talked about sections in As, Bs and Cs. Could you tell me what the structure was of the tune we just hummed? Take 20 seconds. What is the structure of that tune? Think about it, did any repeat? Did any sound the same? Hopefully you've spotted four phrases and the structure is A, B. A, same as the first one. C. ABAC Well done if you spotted that. Let's sing another one. Me first, then you. Try and think about the pitches while you're singing. Try and think about how many phrases there are. Here we go. Me first. Well done for joining in with that humming. What about that one? Did you spot how many phrases there are? Did you spot if any of them sounded similar? First of all, tell me how many phrases was in that song structure. It was three. And do we remember what the song structure is often if there are three phrases for blues? It's AAB. Good, well done. Keep their song structures in your mind while we go into the rest of the lesson and let's look at what resources you need for today. For today's lesson, you are going to need a piece of paper or a workbook. If you've been using that to write notes, all the worksheet to go with today's lesson. You're going to need a pencil to write with, and a different colour pen for making annotations, corrections and generally marking your work. And then for music making for today, you're going to need either your voice, so be ready to sing some parts, or an instrument that you feel really comfortable performing and creating melodies on, or access to a keyboard or a keyboard app for making those melodies. If there's anything that you need to go and get from that list, pause the video now, and then come back and press play, when you've got everything you need. Right, let's look at our structure for today. The first thing we're going to do is have a look at which instruments, in a blues band, play the melody lines. Then we're going to recap the key blues melody parts, so main tunes and things that come back throughout our melody pieces, which parts are those? Then you're going to have a go at composing your own blues head and we'll recap what a blues head is. And then you're also going to have a go at composing your own AAB vocal or instrumental melody line. Lots of music making today, all around blues music. All right, let's get straight to it. To work out which instruments play blues melodies, so which instruments in the band will play the tune, we're going to watch a film clip. We're going to watch the film adaptation of a Broadway musical called "Hellzapoppin'". And this adaptation was recorded in 1941. It's been remastered all in colour. We're going to watch just a short part of a really long sort of jazz and bluesy swing dancing section of the film, but it is a brilliant example of instruments that play melodies in a blues band. While we're watching the video, I want you to be paying attention to the three questions on the left hand side. Take a moment now just to read through those questions. Great, keep those three questions in your mind while we are watching so we're actively watching and looking for the answers while we are going through the clip. Here's the clip for the first time.

Hey pops, keep that beat a beatn'. I feel a rhythmic brainstorm coming on. One, two. Keep that rhythm hitting. One more rhythm like that and I'll be gone. Oh man, don't stop now, we jumpin'. Give everything to the Lord now. This thing might turn into something. I ain't mistaken, here comes something--

Great, such a brilliant clip from that film adaptation of a Broadway musical. I think it's such a lovely way of showing how talented the blues musicians were in the 1930s and 1940s. I'm hoping most of you will have the answers for questions one, two, and three, but let's just watch the intro to the clip now again and just make sure you've written everything you want to down. Ready to go through it together.

Hey pops, keep that beat a beatn'. I feel a rhythmic brainstorm coming on. One, two. Keep that rhythm hitting. One more rhythm like that and I'll be gone. Oh man, don't stop now, we jumpin'. Give everything to the Lord now. This thing might turn into something. I ain't mistaken, here comes something--

Okay, let's go through the answers for this one together. Different colour of pen ready. So the instruments that were playing melody lines were trumpet, clarinet and trombone. Answer to the second question, they are improvising over the bass and guitar. These instruments really do have the melodies because their improvise sections were for much longer and were played over the top of the 12 bar blues structure, and we can hear that it was the 12 bar blues because the walking baseline. You could hear the bom bom dom dom dom dom dom dom dom, yeah? In the double bass. The answer to number three is true. The trumpet improvise a short melody in between the spoken rhythmic phrases. So when the drummer comes in, there is this call and response improvisation section where the spoken vocals, where like would sing a phrase and then the trumpet would respond with a short improvisation so call and response between the trumpet and the spoken rhythm. Well done if you got any of those answers right. Give yourself big ticks. Write the correct ones down on your piece of paper so you've got them for your notes. Pause the video if you need to, to do that, otherwise let's look at the next task. So now we've used that video clip to have a think about which instruments play the blues melodies. Let's recap the kind of melodies that we're likely to hear in blues music. Key melody parts that you're likely to hear in blues music. There are three, and I want you to write down what you think they are. If you've been with us for the unit of blues, unit three, then you should have an idea of the kind of parts that we've been playing and we've been listening to in blues music that are the melody lines. There are three images there to give you a clue, and I want you to think about structures and pitches. So have a go, pause the video, take two minutes to write down which three key melodies we hear in blues music. Let's go through those three together. So the first one on my list is the blues head. We spoke about this before, we learned Bags' Groove, Yeah, Bags' Groove blues head. And we know that that is a repeated melody or theme throughout a blues piece. Well done. The second one is improvising, okay. So we will hear lots of improvisation in blues music and they are melodies, obviously. They're repeated phrases and they might be made upon the spot, but they're still tunes over the top of accompaniment. And the last one is call and response. Question and answer in different structures. In our introduction today, and in previous lessons about song structure, we learned about AAB phrasing and ABAC, and sometimes A to finish, or it just finishes on C. So well done if you got the three main sort of melodic ideas that are heard in blues music. Write them down if you didn't get them so that you've got a really clear list in your head of melodies that we can have a go at creating today. We are now at the composing part of our lesson. The bulk of time you're going to spend now is on making your own melody parts. The first thing you're going to do is having a go at creating your own blues head. Few things that we need to consider when we are making a blues head. We have to remember the 12 bar blues structure that everything is based around, and we're going to stay in G so keep those 12 bars in your mind. With that 12 bar blues structure is the blues scale. G, B flat, C, D flat, D, F, G. And then we've got a list here of suggestions or steps to take, to creating your own blues head. So we're just going to make a two bar blues head today. If you want to have a go at making one that's longer, brilliant, but start with two bars. Use the notes of the blues scale, use swung quaver rhythms and use repetition and simple phrases. Remember, that's absolutely fine. We want this to be a short melody that is easy to play and really memorable and so listeners and performers are going to enjoy hearing it and playing it in the piece as it repeats. Let's go through a few options. I'll give you a demonstration of how to do this. I'm going to show you on a keyboard app. You can do one on an actual keyboard or piano if you've got one. If you'd like to do this on the instrument of your choice, absolutely, that would be brilliant. If you're a guitarist or a saxophonist or whatever instrument, definitely play it on that. Make sure you start on G or you start on a note that's in that blues scale and think about ending on G because that helps the next part or helps it feel like the phrase is finished. Let's recap Bags' Groove head, 'cause we know that's a really successful piece and we looked at why when we studied Bags' Groove. This is the head And that's it. So simple, but so effective and it's been played and performed by so many different blues musicians. Again, it's two, three. Swung rhythms. and all the notes of the blues scale. So we also want to make just two bars, like that, using the blues scale, using swung rhythms, and you can repeat some of the notes. You just want to play around with that blues scale until you find a melody that you really like the sound of. I am going to start on G just cause that's an easiest place to start. Okay, I quite like that first idea I had, bum bum bum ba rum bum And now I need to think whether it fits. Bum bum bum ba rum bum ba ra rum bum bum bum ba rum bum. Well, that's actually four bars. That's double what we were looking at so maybe I can just shorten it. So just a part of that would be two bars. Let's see if it's an eight, yeah, let's see if it's in eight beats. Bum bum bum bum bum bum Ba ra rum. See that fits in eight, but it doesn't sound finished. It would sound weird to end our head there and then another part take over. Bum bum bum bum bum bum, ba ra rum Yeah, so that would be my head. So dun dun dun dun dun dun, du ru rum. Te te te re re re re re reo. That was an improvised trumpet and then the head would come back. So, that's what you need to do. You just have a play around with the notes of the blues scale, thinking about all those factors, repeated patterns. It's okay to play the same note a few times and remember to keep it nice and swung and nice and short so somebody can sing it. Enjoy, off you go. Great work so far, everyone. I'm sure your blues head is sounding brilliant and make sure you go and perform those either with somebody at school or somebody at home and record it so that you can maybe use it with your accompaniment that you made last lesson, or maybe for your own blues composition in the future. Final part of today's lesson is composing your own structured vocal or instrumental melody. Let's have a look at a modern piece of blues music. This is a Welsh pop artist called Duffy. She released a song called "Mercy" in 2008. It was really popular at the time. In fact, it got to the number one spot in the charts and it was there for five weeks, which is just brilliant. We're going to listen to the clip now and you're going to answer the four questions on the left hand side. So take a few moments now to read through those questions. Now remember this is active listening, so I know you might enjoy the track, but we need to answer the questions as well so keep those in your mind while we listen to it. I'll play the clip twice. Make sure you're writing your answers down. Here's the clip for the first time. ♪ You got me begging you ♪ ♪ For mercy ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Why won't you release me ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ You got me begging you ♪ ♪ For mercy ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Why won't you release me ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ I said release me ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ Here's the clip for the second time. ♪ You got me begging you ♪ ♪ For mercy ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Why won't you release me ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ You got me begging you ♪ ♪ For mercy ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Why won't you release me ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ I said release me ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ Pause the video now and take two minutes to finish writing your answers to those questions. Get your pen of a different colour and get ready to go through and mark those now. The first one was this song is modern blues. How do we know? The things I spotted are that they clearly are being played on by more modern instruments. There are some effects put on the sounds of those instruments. All of the insurance would have been electric so electric bass, electric guitar, maybe some synthesised sounds. Definitely the organ wouldn't have been on a real jazz organ. It would have been like what a synthesiser. So there's modern instruments, but you can still hear there's a baseline. Bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom. And it's still in the 12 bar structure. So the underlying accompaniment and harmony is that of blues music. Well done if you spotted that walking baseline and 12 bar structure, really impressive stuff. Number two, does Duffy, the singer, slide or bend her notes? How do you know? Yeah, it's just that is you can hear she slides from one note to the other, like on the word release. So she does use slides and bends just like more traditional blues singers would do to create a motion and to put bluesy effects and techniques onto vocals, like Bessie Smith, who we looked at a few lessons ago. Number three, how many phrases are in the chorus we're listening to? The answer to that is three. And number four, what is the structure of those phrases? So we've got AAB, AB, or ABAC and the answer is AAB. There are three phrases and each phrase takes four bars each. Well done if you've got those right. It's great that you're starting to recognise key blues features even in more modern music. Time for you to structure your blues melodies. I'm going to show you two ways of doing it and then you are going to choose how you'd like to structure your melodies today. You're going to use the blues scale in G again. My lyrics are the same for A or two A phrases, but the pitches will be slightly different. So mine was, ♪ Oh, I miss my baby, ♪ ♪ Feels like time to go ♪ Second phrase is the same lyrics, but I slightly changed the pitch. ♪ Oh, I miss my baby, ♪ ♪ Feels like time to go ♪ And then B is completely different. Different lyrics and a different pitch, but I need the end of that phrase to rhyme with the two A phrases. So go and know ♪ I wrote a love letter, ♪ ♪ They really need to know ♪ And my no, and ♪ Oh, I miss my baby ♪ What'd you notice? ♪ You really need to know, ♪ ♪ Oh, I miss my baby ♪ What can you hear in the pitch between no and oh? Hopefully you've spotted that they're the same pitch. And that is how we can make it sound like the start of the phrase or the start of the verse at the end of the verse. ♪ Oh, I miss my baby, ♪ ♪ Really need to know ♪ And that's one thing that you can do to make the full verse sound complete. The other way of structuring is ABAC When we did this before, when we looked at the vocal piece "Wade in the Water". That followed this structure. It went A, ♪ Wade in the water ♪ B, ♪ Wade in the water children ♪ A came back exactly the same as it was before. ♪ Wade in the water ♪ Then C, ♪ God's going to trouble the water ♪ So that's the ABAC structure. What I'd like to show you now is a brief demonstration of how I would go about composing these four phrases, but essentially it's three, A, B and C. They're eight beat long, you don't want anything too complicated. It needs to be sung or quite playable and quite memorable because these floating versus repeat and then the lyrics changed throughout. G is always a good place to start 'cause that's the blues scale we're using and I want to come up with A phrase so let's just play around with the blue scale until I find the first phrase that I'll like the sound of. So that's swung rhythm there. So that's going to be my first phrase. We're going to use different part of the scale to create B. Yeah, so it's simple. Just two notes but I think that works quite well. So A A comes back. And I need to finish off with C and I want to come back to A, just as if the end of the phrase would rhyme. I'm going to put that little passing note in there. That little F sharp passing note. My whole ABAC is, A, C. Okay, so our final, big composing tasks, now that you've had the demonstration and we've looked at the different ways of doing this, you're going to create your own blues melody, either in the structure AAB or ABAC. Once you've created it, so it's going to take you 10 minutes, I think, to create the melodies, longer if you need to spend at least 10, and then you're going to spend another 10 minutes practising it to perform that melody over the top of the 12 bar blues chords, okay? And similar to our recordings and performances before, you can play it as a paired performance. So one of you plays the 12 bar blues chord progression, while one of you plays your structured melody over the top, or you play live with a recorded part, like I've demonstrated before. Remember you can do it singing or on your chosen instrument so it's up to you how you want to perform your blues melody. Remember all of those blues features that we've looked at and we've learned about over the last few lessons. Remember to put in emotion if you're doing vocals and have fun with it and just enjoy composing. Well done today, everyone. I'm sure your structured blues melodies are just sounding brilliant, especially if you've put vocals to them or if you've played them on your chosen instrument. Please go and share them. Be brave, perform in groups, or record your part and share it with other people. It is really impressive to compose something completely of your own and we've definitely built the skills up for you to be able to do that throughout this unit. Please go and take the quiz so you can show me everything that you've learned about structured melodies and how to compose. And hopefully I'll see you soon in one of my next lessons. Take care everyone. Bye.

Here is your opportunity to show me everything you have learned about melodies in blues music. Make sure you read the questions carefully.

What is this instrument called?

Which of these instruments often play the melody parts in blues music?

What melodic idea is a 'head' in blues music?

What is improvising in blues music?

What is the melodic structure AAB?

Name the song that made Duffy a famous artist.

How is a blues melody structure?

In this lesson, we are going to create a structured blues melody above last lesson's accompaniment. We will make creative decisions about who from the 'band' improvises in our blues piece.

Lesson overview:How is a blues melody structured?

Core Content

Band Musicianship 2: The Blues: