As I passed by, this bell’s emptiness stopped me. Is it the form of an object that defines its existence or its function?
This bell will never ring, it will just hang as an upside down chalice, greeting every passerby.
But it will never ring.
Author: Zach G.
This is the camera of Edward Curtis. He photographed the American West, namely Native Americans.
I looked into the eye of the camera as they had– an eye that had seen so much and allowed us to continue to see so much.
The camera sat there, its lens staring into the gallery. Will it ever see again?
Playing country blues music changed my life in many respects, even beyond the music itself. I wanted to share these basics to give the opportunity for it to do the same for you.
Once you learn the bass techniques, the rest will fall into place.
You may be wondering where you should take the music next— I would respond by asking what do you want out of this music?
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- If you are interested in technical playing, I would recommend checking out the music of Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Blake. They were two of the finest guitarists that ever lived and whose style was rooted in the Ragtime tradition. If you want to stay in a more down home blues tradition, listen to Blind Lemon Jefferson.
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- If the notion of playing on your front porch attracts you, check out the playing of Mississippi John Hurt or Bukka White. They had a casual approach that evokes an image of people gathering together listening to them play.
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- If you want to learn the tools to bear your soul, check out Johnny Shines or Scrapper Blackwell. These players played and sang in a manner that will move you. What they played was semi-technical, but they had a very emotionally laden sound.
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- If you’re interested in singer-songwriter, folk music sounds, check out Charley Patton or Lightnin’ Hopkins. These guys inspired generations of players and dabbled in a lot of styles outside of blues.
The only way to play this music is to first learn songs by ear or through tabulature. A lot of veteran country blues players insist that learning by ear is the best way to learn. I personally have found that starting with tabulature to help visualize the chords and progressions to be very helpful, and will allow learning by ear to be easier. In the busy and bustling world we live in, you may not have time to learn by ear, so tabulature makes this music more accessible.
Luckily, we live in an age where there is a lot of great teaching material and tabulature available online. The best materials out there are through John Miller or Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop. Stefan learned directly from the original country blues artists like Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and Skip James.
Beyond playing the music itself, I hope you also look into the rich history that allowed this music to come into fruition. Sometimes reading into the stories of these individuals can resonate and help guide you down the path. A great resource for learning more is the online country blues community Weenie Campbell.
Best of luck, and feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions!
Aside from a driving feel, monotonic bass can also give a simplistic drum like beat to your music. It can create space in a way that alternating bass cannot.
Again, these bass techniques are a way of creating a fabric that you can adorn.
Robert Johnson was a master of creating space. He played a similar accompaniment to many of his most well known songs– it featured simple A position chords in a 12 bar Blues format. Johnson would alter the tempo and placement of the notes in each, giving them a different feel.
A good example of this is in his song Kind Hearted Woman. We are lucky enough to have two takes of this song. One features a slow tempo, the other with a quicker one. Although the notes he plays are similar, the space he creates using the bass creates a much different feel.
Here are his performances of Kind Hearted Woman:
In order to give you an exercise to practice the monotonic bass, let’s take a look at his song Me and the Devil Blues. The chords used are identical to Kind Hearted Woman, Phonograph Blues, 32-20 Blues, and Dead Shrimp Blues. By learning this song you are actually learning 5 songs. Sounds like a good deal to me!
Here is my performance of Me and the Devil Blues:
The chords I use is are an D7 shape moved up to the 9th fret to be A7. It looks like this:
I use a D7 shape with my thumb hooked over the neck to catch the F# note. This shape is important for monotonic bass so you can get a really low sounding note.
I also use an E7 shape that looks like this:
During the second A section in the progression I use a A flat 7 chord. This is essentially a D chord shape moved up one string, and up to the 5th fret. It gives the song a sinister lonesome feel. Robert Johnson got this chord from Scrapper Blackwell. It sounds awesome!
Finally, during the turnaround I utilize the A7 shape from the previous lesson and walk down in the bass. The turnaround riff looks like this:
Here is the basic tablature of the progression:
One thing to pay attention to is how the pulse of the bass effects the feel. At some times I place the note right on the beat, with 4 pulses a measure. Sometimes, I double up on the beat and give each measure 8 pulses.
How you create the fabric is up to you.
Once you have mastered the Robert Johnson A blues progression, add other licks, or sing over it! I learned to play this years ago and still play it almost everyday because it’s such an awesome template.
We will take a look at Sam Chatmon’s That’s Alright to demonstrate how we can weave the two bass techniques together to create a cohesive fabric.
From the outside, the window looks dim. Only those on the inside knows the glory of the light shining through the glass, illuminating the room within.
Let the light shine through and give the room the chromatic brilliance that is its nature.
Sitting on the wall, these face see thousands pass in front of them. Who are these forgotten people?
Always there, always waiting, always watching, never known.
How much rain and wind removed the red of the rose? We look at it in eternal bloom within our hand. What’s next is up to you.
Monotonic bass literally means single tone. In practice, it is the technique of playing a single note over a song’s melody. It gives songs a driving, down home feel as opposed to the bouncy feel of an alternating bass.
Alternating bass is much better to learn first so you can really free up the thumb and begin to understand which bass notes are appropriate to play over a chord.
The end goal of these lessons is to truly free up the thumb and allow you to switch between alternating and monotonic bass to create the foundation YOU want to create while you play country blues music.
You will hear monotonic bass a lot in Texas blues— check out Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin Hopkins to hear this technique in practice.
To demonstrate the monotonic bass, I will be playing Hey Hey by Big Bill Broonzy. Pay attention to the switching of what note is played depending on what chord I am playing.
Hey Hey is in the key of E. I play the open low E string over the E sections (I chord), the open A string over the A sections (IV chord), and I play F# over the B section (V chord).
The B chord I use is the A chord shape below, moved up two frets.
Here is the demonstration:
Notice how I play single notes in the bass over the melody. I do not switch between the 1st and 3rd strings as I would while using the alternating bass technique.
Learning how to play this type of bass should be relatively straight forward. You will be using the same chord shapes, and in many respects, the thumb movement is simpler.
In the next lesson we will be applying this technique to Robert Johnson’s blues standard Me and the Devil Blues.
How many paintings have forgotten faces? Faces meticulously created by artists, only to be lost in the work as a whole.
If great works of art are comprised of pieces of a whole, then each piece is essential.
These faces say so much, hold so much meaning, but are forgotten and unrecognized.
As I walked down the the rocky slope, an old woman stopped us:
“It’s beautiful here, but sad. I hiked this path every year for twenty years, and I see the glaciers slowly disappear.”
The old woman walked off. My partner and I looked at each other.
We only knew the beauty of right now. I wondered what next year held when I would surely return.
Would I run into the woman again? Would she say the same thing?
These experiences make me appreciate photography. It’s not just a way for me to share my world with others, but to document what my flawed memories cannot.
