Blues in C: Bar Talking
I wanted to write some blues for students that would sound good unaccompanied and tried to to this by bringing the chords out with double stops and placing chord tones prominently. I also wanted to show a variety of ways to approach a solo blues, from rhythmic play like Thelonius Monk might have used, to staying on a few notes in interesting ways. Each time through it changes somewhat, and I have marked each 12-bar section with double bars so it’s easy to see. You will also see it contains a ton of what we "blue notes” and short little chromatic runs of a few notes. Notice the title is a bit of a pun (hint: classical composer) but it also seems like a bar would be a likely place for some loud blues to be playing, at a volume where you have to shout into the other person’s ear to be heard.
Let’s now go over a few facts about blues:
It is deeply rooted in singing, and typically when sung you would have 2 question phrases and an answer phrase forming a 12-bar structure
It uses blue notes, which are flat 3, flat 5 and flat 7. That is, flat compared to major. The normal 3, 5 and 7 from major may also appear and mix with their blue counterparts.
Blues uses 7th chords a lot. Interestingly, the 7th in the F7 chord is also the flat 3 (the blue note) of the C chord. And the 7th of C is the flat 3 of G.
Blues forms the foundation on which jazz and rock are built. Both expand on its relative simplicity.
You may notice in early blues recordings that it wasn’t completely standard at first but eventually the standard structure became 12 bars. As time went on the basic chords might be embellished with some extra additions but the basic scheme of the chord structure will be the same underneath.
