Hello all! Earlier this week I mentioned that I’d be taking part in a blog challenge put out by one of our affiliate sites, Music Sparks. The theme? Blue. So simple and yet so complex at the same time, much like the musical style that comes to mind. Most easily recognized in 12 bar “AAB” form, Blues as we know them best today are both a music form and a genre, derived from distinct chordal structures, tonal patterns, and subject matter of old African American Music. The Blues are direct, the Blues are emotional, but above all, the Blues are accessible. They’re easy on the ears (for the most part) and their lyrics have staying power – people across generational and cultural divides can all relate to Blues lyrics. That’s why I like to use the Blues as springboards for working with my Adolescent clients.
Adolescents and Music often go hand and hand, whether we’re consistently aware of it or not. Listening to, playing and writing music can often be a sanctuary for teens – it allows them to process all of their feelings about school, their peers, and their families with all of their emotions, through tempo, pitch and sheer decibel level (gotta feel that bass!). So it’s not too surprising that when I ask students about their favorite kinds of music that I often get more personal information from them than I would have gotten just asking about their home life directly. Who and what they listen to speaks volumes (literally!) – These kids have a lot to say, and Music can help them say it! The challenge is reigning all that projection in. Without the proper supports I find teenagers can be a bit like that X-men First Class character, Havoc: all power and no focus. It can come across as chaotic and get written off as unproductive when the potential for so much more is there. So, I use the Blues to help students isolate their ideas and work on developing them more effectively. Here are a few elements of the Blues that I use to do that:
Lyrical Form (for our purposes, “AAB”): Before we even look at chords or melody, I ask students to come up with a single phrase based on a question like “What’s bothering you today?” or “How do you feel about ______ ?” I ask that they keep it short, even limiting them to a specific number of syllables if necessary. We write that phrase down once, then again on the separate line and label both lines “A.” After the two “A”s we write a “B” phrase. Something that follows up on “A” but doesn’t necessarily introduce any new ideas, just a different way of saying what’s already been said. For instance:
A: “I’m so tired today – didn’t get any sleep last night”
A: “I’m so tired today – didn’t get any sleep last night”
B: “Tossing and turning til the morning – All I wanna do now is shut my eyes”
If students are feeling particularly uninspired, sometimes we will pull up Google Images on a computer, type a random word and then choose a single image to describe in order to create lines for our song (this sparked a story song about loneliness one week – can take you further than you think!) Creating simple lyrics like this helps students practice different ways of phrasing and provides an opportunity to talk about how one way of saying something might be more appropriate or more helpful than another – an important life lesson!
Rhythm and Melody: next we look at how we might say or sing the lyrics. What’s nice about the AAB format that we use is that there’s no wrong way to to this – a student that’s more vocally inclined may want to get really technical about what beats they start the phrase on, what their pitches are, and how they emphasize specific syllables. Others might just want to have a little guitar riff with spaces built in where they just say each phrase without any real rhythmic or melodic emphasis. Either of those works just fine, so long as students make a conscious decision about which one they’re doing and give it their best effort (another life lesson!)
Chord structure: early in working with my clients, I might tell them not to worry about this part – I might come in with a chord set already chosen, or perhaps few templates of traditional Blues progressions that I can play through and offer students a choice, or we might take the time as a group to learn a few chords to create our own guitar progression. The sky’s the limit!
I find that after a day of Blues writing, the pressure is off of students to be Eminem and create complex rhymes and thoughts on the first try – the pressure is also off of them to do anything too emotionally revealing. Blues can be funny too! I remember a class a few years back that wrote a whole progression about Tacos – it was a really fun day, and allowed the staff working at the facility I was serving to see their students in a different light. Even the most broody, oppositional student was participating appropriately that day – that song, that day, didn’t have to be about the tough stuff – we just cut loose. Everyone needs to do that now and then!
So, cut loose today – have some fun creating nonsense lyrics to a song you know. Blues form or not, popular music today has it’s own structure familiar to Western Music listeners, and many of them have lyrics and rhythms that are pretty easy to follow and relate to. Who knows, you might just find that singing the Blues never felt so good!
