Blues Music:

African music is characterized by the use of syncopations. This element passed right into blues. Blues uses frequent syncopations. [1] In addition, during performance, instrumental musicians create short ‘musical fillings’ that eliminate the perception of any silences.[2] This filling of breaks opened the door to free improvisation. In addition, these impromptu embellishments became a regular practice of blues and a fundamental characteristic of the style.[3]  The idea of improvisation is associated to the African culture. In Western Africa, musical performances are spontaneous and improvisatory.[4]

Blues singing style:  blues singing exhibit the following characteristics:

-a vocal part reminiscent of heightened speech, with a Narrow range

-it is a smooth continuum between speaking and singing.

-a delivery independent of the underlying beat

-a rough, highly inflected vocal timbre.

-Blues songs emphasize the instrumental role by often featuring call-and-response interchange between voice and instrument.[5]

Melodic Characteristics: A prominent quality of blues music is the use of a bent third, seventh, sometimes fifth and less often the sixth degrees of the scale.[6]  Many scholars believe that this characteristic derivates from the African music use of the pentatonic scale.[7]

Blues Form:  Consist of an indefinite number of sections, or choruses, and has no standard length. Songs can be long or short depending on subject and inspiration. Within a chorus, however, it has a strict form. A typical blues song contains three phrases per chorus. Each verse follows a strict poetic, melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic form. [8]

Poetic form: Each chorus in a blues song typically contains a rhymed couplet, two different lines of text with the first line repeated. [9]

Melodic form: Each line of text is sung to its own melodic ideas. The second phrase of the melody (sung to the first line of text) is either a literal repetition of the first phrase or (more often) a slight variation of the first phrase. [10]

Rhythmic form: Each phrase of a standard blues chorus lasts four bars; each bar (or measure) contains four beats. One chorus of a blues song contains twelve measures, so standard blues form is often identified as twelve-bar-blues.[11]

Harmonic form: The harmonic framework of the blues is built on a three chords pattern occurring in an unorthodox order.[12]  This pattern is the harmonic frame for blues musicians’ improvisations.[13] The first chord (I or tonic) begins and ends the first phrase of a section. The second phrase begins with the second chord (IV or subdominant) and returns to the first chord halfway through the phrase. The third phrase begins with the third chord (V or dominant); it also returns to the first chord halfway through. [14]

Basic Blues Harmony: [15]

Beginning Midpoint

Phrase 1        I        I

Phrase 2        IV        I

Phrase 3        V        I

Improvisation: Although the blues form is based on a harmonic pattern. Blues musicians improvised over this pattern in many ways only limited by the performer’s imagination. For instance, improvisations are usually done at the end of each line of text completing the four-bar lines. These improvisations can be instrumental improvisations, or half-spoken, half-sung nonsense syllables. Blues performers also embellished their performance by adding improvised additions of scoops, slides, blue notes, and other creative and expressive effects.[16]