Why do people say The blues is sad?

;_;

Lonely guy just thinking baout things

I wouldn't say "sad," I would say "real"

I'd agree that the blues isn't sad even though it's about sadness. Isn't the main point of 'singin' the blues' to create a cathartic experience? I think people confuse singing about sadness and actually being permanently sad.

Maybe it's also the whole misery loves company thing. People have been told for so long that the blues is sad that somebody automatically turns to some old bluesman to share his misery.

I find any musical style that focuses on the same boring and overused three chords over and over again kinda sad....

I find any guy that focuses on the same boring and overused opinions and over again kinda sad....

Ivor and blueski OTM.

i've got the blues/kraft macaroni and cheese

saddoes

velko otm
blueski otm
latebloomer otm
jeremy waters otm
hoos otm
everybody otm

i think the trick is to compare early blues to the other music of its time.

I find any guy that focuses on the same boring and overused opinions and over again kinda sad....

Why don't you say that to all those people who goes on and on about how boring it is with white guys with guitars? There are maybe hundred of them in ILM while I fighting all alone for melody and harmony here.

http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/playground-bullying.jpg

Geir OTMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!11

http://www.crobek.com/Public/Images/Funny%20Pics/Land_Of_Make_Believe.jpg

velko otm
blueski otm
latebloomer otm
jeremy waters otm
hoos otm
everybody otm

-- PappaWheelie V, Sunday, August 10, 2008 4:41 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

ha i am not even on this thread yet

I'd say you'd understand the sadness in the blues if you did listen to the lyrics, which are mostly about loss or longing or cheating women or drinking too much.

Why don't you say that to all those people who goes on and on about how boring it is with white guys with guitars?

Uh, we have?

Sure, there's lots of blues that isn't unhappy, but thread-starter is one of those Joy Division fans, isn't he?

I like Joy Division but I don't consider myself a fan. But yes, part of what I find appealing about them is that they made sad music.

I fighting all alone for melody and harmony here.

geir's blues

daavid, I'll agree with you on Joy Division: Some of their music is pretty damn sad.

Wat do we say when something goes beyond "otm" to, like, justify ILM's existence and stuff. Because tipsy mothra that.

The blues is happy/sad. It's not neatly one or the other. That's part of what makes it the blues. Ivor is OTM about catharsis. I'd say the use of minor intervals over major chords in the blues is an important musical expression of that bittersweet aesthetic.

Whoa i work right next to that place (xxxxxxxxpost)

If you don't think the blues can be sad, then you have clearly never heard any Skip James.

Oddly enough I've never found Skip James sad, just a little disconcerting. John Hurt & Barbecue Bob make me sad, Robert Johnson makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, Skip James just gives me the creeps (in a good way!).

http://www.hit.no/var/storage/images/bokser_og_vedlegg/gary_moore/154875-1-nor-NO/gary_moore.jpg

only sad music can make your face look like this

St3ve Go1db3rg OTM.

Saddest "blues" thing I've ever heard = "Maggot Brain".

I've gotta say that I'm not a big straight-blues fan, really. My favourite type of blues is the uptempo rocking sort, like Howlin' Wolf and Hound Dog Taylor for example. Not to mention the guys who started with blues and transmogrified it, like Bo Diddley and Hendrix and Zeppelin and Beefheart.

...I'd say the use of minor intervals over major chords in the blues is an important musical expression of that bittersweet aesthetic.

-- St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 11 August 2008 00:01 (7 hours ago) Link

I don't really understand what you're saying here. Could you be more specific?

I'm interested in this because it's precisely the chords in the blues progression that I find, well, kind of boring TBH and not bittersweet at all. An example of a chord that sounds bittersweet to me is maj7. Of course it all depends on the context.

Geir has a point IMO - when certain artists, especially those working outside a traditional blues form, continually take recourse to a blues chord-sequence, it maddens me. But those making traditional blues, I have no problem with.

Geir has a point IMO - when certain artists, especially those working outside a traditional blues form, continually take recourse to a blues chord-sequence, it maddens me. But those making traditional blues, I have no problem with.

There are no artists making traditional blues (as in 30s delta blues) today, and really haven't for decades. I have no problem with Robert Johnson and those guys, they found their style and had a very personal way of expressing it. But by the 50s, it was already overused.

I think we all know what you mean by "overused" there, something in the "wait guys, we've already provided enough for others to come along, jack our ideas, and make it into something Geir will love in another fifty years, we can just quit our music now"

nothing is more over-used than the pre-school intellect melodic hooks of popular horlicks rock merchants

There are maybe hundred of them in ILM while I fighting all alone for melody and harmony here.

http://www.geotimes.ge/uploads_script/news/8e86bf9d2b38eb6.jpg

I don't really understand what you're saying here. Could you be more specific?

The prototypical blues chord progression is made of dominant seventh chords built on the I, IV, and V. These chords all contain major thirds. Blues guitar lines often contain the minor third scale degree as well as or instead of the major third. The minor third scale degree is the 7th of the IV chord, but it's a dissonance against the I chord. Blues guitar lines also often include the flatted fifth scale degree, which is not found in any of the chords. What guitarists refer to as the "blues scale" is a minor pentatonic with an added flat fifth, but in practice the intervals used by many blues players are a more fluid mix of major and minor, creating consonances and dissonances against the rather static background harmony that are in part responsible for the bluesy sound.

Does that make more sense?

Happy Blues:

Loudon Wainwright III - "I'm Alright"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3x_WfUjwH4

wow. read Albert Murray's Stompin' the Blues for starters to get rid of the idea blues is about "sadness" or that blues depends on the amusing textbook, simplistic, idiotic definitions of "dominant seventh chords and all that jive. I can assure you that Furry Lewis did not worry about "blues scales" nor was Furry Lewis "sad" when he performed; his songs are funny, first of all; second, blues is about self-assertion in the face of the kind of odds most people would would blanch at. Blues as philosophy says, the world tells me I need to change, and then I changed, and then it turns out it's the world that needs to change, and that's a lesson people have trouble with. you guys are confusing what you think "blues" "performances" are--yeah, uh, Loudon Wainwright plays a blues, everyboy plays a blues, country music can formally be blues, on and on. But that doesn't have much to do with what we're really talking about here. And I would suggest tracking down James Rooney's book Bossmen and reading Muddy Waters talk about blues and its TIME, how to put time behind those three chords, dominant-seventh, zzzzz....get it? I'm not knocking the musical analysis of blues' chords, and the apparent simplicity of the structure is what, thankfully, keeps out people like any number of Europeans who don't understand the bit about the world needing to change but it's really you, no it's really the world...but think they get it because they know the chords, or codes, rather. what a depressing fucking thread in every way, hasn't anybody learned ANYTHING from all the blues we've heard for a century? Jeez-us.

whisperineddhurt droppin' science^

real talk

Does that make more sense?

-- St3ve Go1db3rg, Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:27 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Absolutely, thanks :)

the blues scene today is almost an insult to the blues music that inspired it. it's like white guys in bowling shirts playing mustang sally and the like.

so yes the blues is sad

hahahaha!!

Edd:

thread-starter is one of those Joy Division fans

...blues is about self-assertion in the face of the kind of odds most people would would blanch at.

-- whisperineddhurt

The "sorrows" that crop up so often in blues lyrics seem like a parcel of burdens borne as the price of life, not some weepy-ass "woe is me" scenario.

Then again, as Neil Young once said, "Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away."

Strue, I just mean the blues rarely seems to be about tugging at the heartstrings of some imagined audience. It's more about the sharing of situations, with the assumption that situations are shared to begin with. That's the way it seems to me, anyhow.

Neil, on the other hand, he is REAL BIG on the "I'm gonna make you people cry now because how bad I says I feel."

someone plz set tipsy mothra's "Geir's Blues" to music plz k thx