Triple-o

I am beginning to think that writing song lyrics can help one write melodic phrases. So, I started to read about song structure and song writing. One source said to start with a metaphor or idiom like “ You’re the end of June” or “Money for Nothing ” and then build from there.They could serve as a title but as you gather steam that title may change.It reminded me of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” which started out as “Into the Misty”. Then I wondered where other song ideas could come from and books seemed an obvious place. I picked up Don Quixote and looked at the first page and found “A skinny old horse and a fast greyhound. Then I tried Great Expectations and found” My first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from there tombstone. Pride and Prejudice I found “ A single man in possession of a fortune must be in need of a wife. Now I realize I can’t borrow those lines but they are “food for thought” Songs that were written before 1923 and in the public domain can also provide material without copyright issues. The early Blues have been “picked to the bone”. Using slang words like “speak easy”, “Dagmar bumper” How about current events like “All roads lead to El Salvador” Reading about song structure was pretty informative.I didn’t know the definition of a refrain or the difference between a bridge and the chorus. I didn’t even know why AAB songs repeated the first verse. I didn’t know songs could start with the chorus. I am still confused about a the pre- chorus. I didn’t know “Yesterday” was AABA a common song structure nor did I know it was a classified as “pop/ rock ballad”. edit …..A I internet search engines afforded light mirth and laughter.

“The man in the street dragging his feet” “ no need for greed or hunger” . Sounds like the lyrics of one song, Take a step back” it’s easy if you try” because “there is no present or future only the past happening over and over again” In the 1970’s there was a “ call and response” John Lennon’s “ Imagine” and Steely Dan’s “Only A fool would say that”. Some say there’s no connection between the songs which I find hard to believe. When you’re sitting alone in the eventide take a look at those songs and see what you think. Now that the “clock strikes thirteen” Eugene O’Neill quote about time isn’t hard to imagine or perhaps it just couldn’t be. I wonder how many song writers have borrowed from his material.

Recently I came across one of her videos. She had her guitar tuned to D# minor I didn’t know there was such a tuning. When I googled her “Dream Pop” came up as her genre, or also know as” shoegazing” two more terms that I’d never heard.

Some say Chuck Berry others might say Elvis or Jackie Brenston but, I think a serious contender is Arthur Crudup. The story of Mr Crudup is pretty sad. He should have been pretty well off instead he was picking up trash for $28.44 a week. A different take on “transfer of wealth”. Was Elvis the first to “cover” a song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxHQUvCkV20

Another Delta Blues.The title caught my attention 32 -20 it’s an old Winchester cartridge for a rifle. A blues book said it was referring to a “sawn off shotgun” but I find that highly unlikely. Some info about the cartridge; the 32 would be the bullet diameter and the 20 would be the grains of black powder by volume.Robert Johnson says in the lyrics its more powerful than the 38 special.I don’t believe that to be true statement. The lyrics do say “cut her in half” and that would seem to indicate a shotgun blast. Even if it was a “sawn off rifle” not shotgun the cartridge was used for rabbit hunting so it wouldn’t do much damage too the meat. When looking at the lyrics one word seems to change depending on the source “cat. camp or cap” appears in different lyrics. They are all black “slang words” but. “cat” would be my choice. “Got to make the cats alright”. Some don’t even contain that last line.By the way a sawn off rifle wouldn’t have used a black powder percussion cap. The other thing that caught my attention was the verses I said, oh baby,where’s you spend the night I said, oh baby, where’s, you spend the night You come in this morning, and you ain’t looking right They sound a lot like verses in Clapton’s “Alberta” PS. The song also uses what some say is the famous fingerstyle Robert Johnson’s turnaround.

Thanks, they are pretty good. They through me a curve because I miss read their song title.I thought they were going to play “Everyday I have the Blues” and I didn’t recognize the opening verses. i wasn’t very clear in my post. What was confusing me was how to to establish the “call and response” phrases melodically in a “Blues guitar solo”. Now I see the call isn’t necessarily a musical question and the melody can end on the tonic not requiring tension and resolution.when the call is a “question” it can end with something other than the tonic. I also thought the opening 3 statements in a (A A B )12 bar blues lyrics form each singing statement (calls and refrain) should have a guitar”response”. The link below is to a rather famous bluegrass call and response that I never thought about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFutge4xn3w&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD

Call and Response, this has been a pretty confusing concept for me to understand in the Blues, simply because I ran into so many different phrase variations being used. I had assumed that call and response was the same as “antecedent and consequent”, where you ask a “musical question” and then get a musical answer one that resolves like a “period”. Resolution being the key! It seems that the “blues call” can be unresolved and the response can simply be a “musical sequence”; or reinstatement of the call melody like “Lord have Mercy” “ Have Mercy on us” I was always assuming that “call and response” meant “tension and resolution “.

I know a lot of folks don’t like the Mel Bay method books. It’s not rocket science to figure out that most beginners want to play contemporary, Rock and Roll or Blues music and not spend hours on some guy’s arrangement of Carcassi, Wieniawki or Foster. My biggest complaint about Mel Bay’s method Books is that he didn’t provide a teachers guide that would explain his lessons and the material seemed to contradict other method books.Perhaps he thought that guitar teachers didn’t need any instructions and his books would only be used by those who truly understood music theory. I use his books to get my fingers moving because most is his material contains an active melody. Now after years I am starting to take a closer look at the music. Recently in one of his lesson a D# dim chord (inverted) suddenly caught me on the jaw and as my head turned it was followed by a quick modulation and a dominant 7 chord that put me on the mat. I was stunned, a dominant 7 chord landed like a tonic and I realized that a iv chord before a V7 resolves just like a V to the I. Reaching for the rope I was beginning to understand Melbourne Bay’s method “Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”.

I was listening to some old songs by Linda Ronstadt the other day and I couldn’t remember her band. It turned out to be “Stone Poneys”. It seems she got that name from one of Charlie Patton’s songs “Stone Pony Blues”. The song “Stone Pony Blues” is another blues song that is hard to interpret.The lyrics talk about him not riding his Shetland anymore and replacing it with the stone pony. Stone Pony is a “wonderful girl” and Shetland is also a woman.He has it tied up at his “riders”door,( “lovers” door) . Then the lyrics say he wasn’t there to steal somebody’s “brown”. ( brown is slang for a black women with a brown complexion.Take my info with a grain of salt. To make things even more confusing is that he also had a song “Stone Pony” written 1929 then “Stone Pony Blues” released in 1934. Getting the different lyrics mixed up seemed to be common. The Stone Pony song version makes reference to Vicksburg being his pony and Rayville being his mare. Them he talks about Vicksburg and Natchez as places in Mississippi and Rayville in Louisiana. PS Linda Ronstadt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year.Sadly she has Parkinson’s Disease. P.S. Then there’s a famous music venue in New Jersey “Stone Pony” with no connection to the song so they say. https://genius.com/Charley-patton-stone-pony-blues-lyrics .

Looks like Waylon Jennings had a little help writing this Blues tune.Around 1930 Charlie Jordan wrote”Keep it Clean”. The lyrics in the middle of Waymore’s Blues are clearly borrowed from “Keep it clean” . For example “ if you want to go to heaven when you D-I-e” compared to if you want to get to heaven ,gotta D-I-e” by Jennings. Where would music be without those old blues players? Some song ideas come from unlikely sources, take “Luke the Drifter” and his connection to romantic comic books. Jordan’s line like “put the muzzle on your mama because she had bad hair now” will surely find its way into another popular music genre if it hasn’t already. Blues

“Wildwood Flowers” I always thought Maybelle wrote this song, of course she would need to change the lyrics today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3wnNNrTwc4

I was trying to learn the rhythm for Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and came across the term “clave”…. I hadn’t heard that term before. https://pulse.berklee.edu/?id=4&lesson=14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sXPDbJ7mFQ https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0070307

A quick look at Susan’s playing courtesy of Guitar World. https://www.guitarworld.com/lessons/susan-tedeschi-blues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKXVH8B7fIs

This post is directed at those driving south from that “northern outpost of sanity” or flying in from the vicinity of the “Cast Iron Shore” to visit the “Home of the Blues”. Please take note! The “Mississippi River delta” is located at the confluence of the river and the Gulf of….Hmmm, gulf of, well, I am really not sure anymore. The river delta is home to about 2 million people. Unfortunately, it’s not home to the Delta Blues. The “Mississippi Delta” is located 300 miles north of the “Mississippi River Delta” and it’s the home to the Blues. a couple of interesting delta blues lessons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWNLKl3szwI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOpk4GgvwPQ

Thanks for the clarification of color tones and chords. My example was confusing. I also remember Steve talking about scale tones being altered like the A7#9. (the Jimi Hendrix chord)