This is my Blues and the soul music blog. similar to my normal music blog it shall comprise rehearsals that I have done with my new band, the progress we have made towards the blues genre, as well as technical elements of the song and research.

My new band consists of…

Myself  (Ben) playing piano/keyboard/synth (different from my last bad).

Lewis playing electric guitar.

Joey playing bass guitar .

Jack creating the beat and tempo.

Izzy on vocals.

We are learning two different blues style songs. we chose from a list of around 10 songs and chose the 2 following tunes…

 

Need your love so bad by Peter green’s Fleet wood Mac.

 

 

 

                                                             and…

         When the train comes back by Chicken Shack

 

 

Need your love so bad – Fleet wood Mac

We are starting on the Fleet wood Mac song for the first couple of weeks. I personally quite like the song. It was released in 1968 on the Fleet wood Mac album “Shrine ’69”. it’s very calming and chilled out music. Fleet wood Macs version was a cover of the original track of the same name by “Little willy John”  and published by king records.

It’s got quite a slow tempo which adds to the relaxed feel of the piece. Played at 72 beats per minute. Also the track is very un-busy so it’s easy to pick out and identify the different instruments involved.

The song follows a more unusual kind of structure. There isn’t really a chorus in the song. The famous hook ‘Need you love so bad’ comes in at the end of each verse with a slight variation each time. then there is a bridge-like section with a different chord progression. The song structure goes like this…

Intro —– 8 bars

verse 1 —– 8 bars 

verse 2 —–  8 bars

bridge —–  8 bars

verse 3 —–  8 bars

outro —– 8 bars

The into to the song is a guitar solo section around 45 seconds long. Played in the key of D major. Then the lead guitar is almost absent until the end of the song with Peter Green only playing a few fills throughout the main section of the song. The song has lots of bends, hammer ons and pull offs which is often used in blues music. The chords progression for this song is slow but fairly complex.

The verses…

A,     A7,     D,     Ebdim,     A,     F*m,     Bm,     E,     A,     D7,     A,     E7,

The bridge…

D,     Ebdim,     A,     A7,     B7,     E,     F,     E,     E7,

 

The song is recorded with 4 different instruments and vocals including: electric guitar, drums, bass guitar and keyboard. These instruments fit into a lot of genres and blues is definitely one of them. The bass and drums provide the beat and rhythm while the keyboard synth responds to the lead guitar during the intro and outro, then joins the other instruments throughout the majority of the song.

Lyrical content…

The lyrical content is strong and keeps true to the style of blues lyrics. (usually about being “blue” for some reason or another). It is a love type of love song focusing on relationships. The song is about longing for your partner to come home. being unfulfilled with life as it is and pleading for things to go back to the way they once were. He sings about missing her, feeling sad, and that she should come home or at least send a letter to him. The way the vocals are arranged is fairly unpredictable with Peter Green singing on top of the song. Not necessarily starting and ending at the end of each bar. Another example of this from a different genre can be founding “The boys are back in town” the rock song by Thin Lizzy. This type of vocal arrangement is fairly easy to sing to but not to copy and get perfect.

Evaluation of the TV studio performance.

13/11/18

My Band and myself performed Peter greens “Need you love so bad” at the TV studio at CCI. Unfortunately our singer was absent so I was the step up vocalist. I also played the piano on jazzy/blues organ setting. Lewis and Joey were both guitarists with their amplifiers set on high treble and reverb. Jack had a beat for us to play to on his laptop.

I thought the performance went pretty well. myself and the 2 guitarists really listened to each others pieces and when to play our parts. we tried a call and response technique with the vocals and guitar licks. so when I am singing the guitars are silent but when I finished a phrase one or two guitars would play. This also meant that the two guitarists were not playing over each other. My part was creating the rhythm of the song. Holding and sustaining chords for the guitarists to play over. also controlling the dynamics between the whole band. where the song builds most energy the chords are played louder but then soften over the verses. Lewis and Joey were in the key of D and playing the same notes as the vocal melody follows but in various different orders. We played the verse 3 times over with elements of verses making up the intro and outro. we kept the BPM at 75 but slowed the track right down to create a real blues tempo. A relaxing laid back piece of music.

                 This is the music video we recorded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS5PT838nUQ&feature=youtu.be

 

 

Soul/disco blog

 

This is my music Blog for the genre – Soul (dance, disco, rhythm).

We are performing the Song – Misled by Kool and the gang.

Here is the official music video…

Like the blues Band, the members are,

Me Ben on Piano,

Lewis and Joey on Guitar,

Izzy on vocals,

Jack making the beat.

The key of this fun song is Eb minor. With all the chords in the progression flattened. This adds a sort of juxtaposition given that the song is so feel good happy but composed in the flattened minor key. The song was released in 1984 on The Kool and the Gang album, ‘Emergency’. the song has a tempo of 122 beats per minute which is quite fast.

Stages of development….

For the first 2 weeks Jack and myself were the only ones attending the rehearsals due to problems so we did what we could. Jack created a beat for the song sticking to the same Bpm. His beat was more  interesting than the original as it incorporated more sounds and beats. Now he is going to go through the whole song and put in symbols in the correct places and where the beat cuts out of the track.

I have been learning the piano/keyboard/organ/synth parts to the song. It is very Busy piece with lots of different instruments. Thus makes it super fun to play. The actual chords are fairly simple, just 4 throughout the song. Its the chords changes and timing which are the hardest to grasp. For the verses are am playing a call and response melody behind the vocalist, sustain the chords at the pre-chorus and then playing quavers during the chorus.

The structure of the song is somewhat strange. it goes like this…

Intro     Verse 1     Pre-chorus     Verse 2     Pre-chorus     Chorus     Verse 3                  Pre-chorus      Chorus        Bridge     Instrumental     Chorus  x2       fade out.

A few weeks in.

Lewis is back at rehearsals now and we have managed to make real progress with the guitar and piano parts. Lewis picked up the timing quite quickly and we were able to play together in no time at all. Lewis was playing mostly power chords throughout the whole song besides the intro which consisted of a blues bend higher on the guitar neck. We were going to make the beat have more sections where it cut out but we didn’t really have time as other people needed to use the college laptops. I also played different variations of the chords during the verse. A line would be sung and then i would play a little ascending or descending lick. Then using sequence, by replaying the lick but an octave higher.

What chords are we using?

The key is B and the chords we used are as follows…

Eb minor,       Db,      B,       Ab minor.