Lesson video

Hi everyone, I'm Miss.

Friar, and welcome to your music lesson, I'm really excited to be your teacher today, we are on lesson 10, of unit, three, so we've nearly completed our blues unit, right, what we're going to do now, is we are going to become, the rhythm section, in a backing track, for a blues band, but the first thing we have to do is build it up, and we start with the pulse, so, here's my backing track.

First thing I want you to do, oh, not quite yet.

The first thing I want you to do is to just nod your head to the pulse, you just need to feel that tempo, and feel that beat, and then I'll give you instructions of how we're going to add some of the body, how are we going to add some other body percussion parts, to build up to a rhythm, okay, let's go.

Oh, we need our intro.

Good.

Okay, next thing we're going to do, is we're going to have to click on the first beat of the box, you need to feel that strong beat, Good.

Feel that tempo, don't go out of time, okay, now what we're going to do is keep all click, but we're going to add a tap with our left hand, on the third beat, on your table with the thigh one, two, three, four, great, keep going, okay, what we're going to do now is swap, we still going to click and tap, but of this to, and for the opposite beat, here we go, oh, one, two, three, four good one, two, three, four, now we're going to move to style, one two, three, four, one, two, three, four, let's go into a shuffle with our claps, count you in, one, two, three, now, you could join in, okay, next up, I'm going to count you in, and after four, I want you to improvise, with four beats like this one, two, three, four okay, so, to go with that shuffle, I'm going to count you in, one, two, three, four, good, now go in the shuffle, my turn, one, two, three, four, shuffle, ready for yours? One, two, three, four, good, let's finish together, and we'll finish there, well done, great shuffling okay, Let's go in, and take a look at what you need for the rest of the lesson, you are going to need the following things.

One, a piece of paper, or a booklet if you're using that to write your notes, or you can use the worksheet that comes with the lesson, you're going to need a pencil to write with, and a different kind of pen to mark, or annotate your work, for today's lesson, we're going to be playing several pops, and so for music making, the instruments you're going to need are, either a bass guitar, or a bass guitar app, or a keyboard or a piano, or a keyboard or piano app, so, if there's anything that you need to go and get, please pause the video now, and go and do that, and then come back, and we'll carry on, okay, so our plan for today is as follows, the first thing we're going to do, is we're going to recap, what a blues accompaniment is, okay, so, specifically looking at the accompaniment path, then we're going to recap some of the key parts you would expect to hear, in the accompaniment line.

Then we're going to learn how we can take those parts, and make them sound really stylish to the blues genre, and then you're going to have a go, at creating your own blues, accompaniment, and performing it in the style that you want, right, let's carry on.

Exploring what a blues accompaniment is.

We're going to watch a short video clip here of a band , performing all blues by Miles Davis, a piece that we looked at in the last lesson, and the two questions I want you to answer, while actively listening and watching, is one, which instruments in this blues band, is the accompaniment, and then explain your answer, and two, describe the parts these instruments are playing, just before we start, can you tell me what an accompaniment part is? What an accompaniment is in music, write it down or tell the screen in five, four, three, two, one, so accompaniment part, is basically a part, that accompanies the main tune, so, it will be the rhythm section, or it will be providing the harmony to the melodies sitting over the top, so it accompanies, that's where it gets his name accompaniment, and is almost acting like the backing track to melodies and the main part, so now, we've got that in your mind, let's watch the clip, and answer these two questions.

Okay, so that is our clip, that is the first sort of intro, and first 12 bar structure of all blues played by this band, hopefully in starting to get your answers together, now, for questions, one and two, I will play the clip for you one more time, just to double check, you've written everything down that you want to.

Here's the clip again.

Great, a lovely performance of all blues by that band, if you need to take more time, pause the video now to finish your answers but if you're ready, let's go through them together now.

So, the instruments that are playing the accompaniment part in this performance, are, drum kit, piano, bass, and guitar, well done if you've spotted it was those four, and hopefully you've explained your answer Why, why you said it's those ones that are acting as the backing track.

Well, they are accompanying the main melodies, and it's because these instruments are not playing the main melodies, but are creating the harmony, and rhythm section, so, the drum kit is creating the rhythm section we've got a nice rhythmic walking baseline, paid on the double bass, and then we've got the guitar and the piano creating harmony with the chords over the top.

Good job, If you've got the answer to that, write that down if you didn't, and well done, if you wrote that the drum kit, was a swung shuffle rhythm, okay, that's what we're always, looking for as a blues feature great okay, so onto the second part of our lesson, recapping the key blues accompaniment parts, all right, three key parts here, drum, kit, piano, and bass, what parts in blues music, would we hear the accompaniment instruments play? Think about pitches, harmony and structure, pause the video now and write your answer, what part would a drum kit play? What part would a piano play? and what part would the double bass play? Take two minutes to write your answers, the drum kit, will, swung or shuffle rhythms, we expect his swung, Quavers probably in the high hats or in one of the symbols, and then we've got the snare, and the kick drum, keeping it nice and rhythmic, and keeping the pulse setting, for the piano, we would expect the piano to be following, the 12 bar blues chord structure, if it was a very accomplished blues band, and instruments within the band were taking tonnes, to do solo, sometimes the piano player, will also do a solo in that, but we'll mainly be playing the chord, so creating the harmony, for other instruments to solo, and play melodies over the top, and the double bass or bass guitar, we'll be playing a walking base line, sometimes again in professional blues bands, musicians who played bass, double bass especially, would maybe take an improvised solo, as part of the accompaniment, good job, if you've got any of those, let's look at these three parts in a bit more detail, and recap so that you are ready to write your own, so, the first one we're going to look at, is the 12 bar blues structure, we did this, oh, a few lessons ago now, but we have played it through a few times, so hopefully you remember, we have 12 bars, each have a different chord within that bar, chords one, which is G, chord four, which is C, and chord five, which is D, and those images that show you how to play those chords, on some other instruments that we would hear at a blues band as well, you clearly guitar and of course, keyboard, or piano, with that 12 bar blues, following the same structure, our bass guitar, or double bass would be paying a walking base line, another part again, we have previously played, I remember the walking baseline is created, or can be created by taking notes, that fits within the chords, so, for chord G, we would play the notes G B D for the baseline, chord C will play note C E G, and for chord D we would playing D Asher, okay, so playing up to lower pitch, we're literally taking the notes of the G chord, and breaking it, so, I'm using my left hand, because this is the base part, so, if you're going to use keyboard, try and use the right techniques, chords in the right hand baseline in the left, one note per beat, okay, one, two, one, two, three, four, false G head, then will to move to C, back down to G, then we go around D, down to C, and a G, and the beat turnaround and we goa around, or we go to G, if we are finished, with the chords it sounds like this, and a nice jezzy rhythm, on the turnaround ready to start the structure again, okay, so that's your recap, of how to play the basic baseline, with the chords, pause the video now, and spend five minutes, just recapping those two parts, as we have previously learned them, okay, in one of the earlier lessons, we actually learnt a particular blues drum pattern, called a double shuffle, and we went through two key patterns, that we would expect to see in a drum pattern, so, Quavers as being swung instead of, it would be, and we don't have to hit triplets, one, two, three, one, two, three, so, they are typical note patterns we expect to hear, within rhythms, if you didn't have a drum kit, to hand, we played Chandra drumming, which is quite often used in schools we had our foot on the floor for our bass drum, or kick drum we used a drum steak, or for some of us, we used two items from our kitchen, and the seat of our chair was the snare, and the back, the top of the back of the chair, was our high hat, and the rhythm was this one at the bottom, some of you may have played a more challenging rhythm, that's great, but this was the rhythm that I wanted everyone to get to be able to play comfortably do you remember which part of the drum kit, is the X line? Do you remember which part of the drum kit, is the X notes, or the top line, yeah, it's the high hat, so the high hat, is all the way through the oldest shuffled beat, do you remember which part of the drum, was on the next space down, playing the same part as the high hat, it was, the snare yes very good, and then on the beats itself, will be it's one, two, three, four, at the bottom is our kick drum, good, there are two markings on beats two, and beats four, do you remember what those mean? Hopefully, you remember that those are accents, which means you play the bass, the snare and the high hat altogether, slightly louder, slightly accented on beats two and four and so, that's another way that the drum shuffle, is more bluesy, but accenting those two beats one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, great, good recap, so what we're going to do, we've got, our drumsticks, we've got our different parts of our kit, so, our foot is our kick drum, then we've got our snare, and we've got our high hat, okay, and the snare and the high hat, are doing the swung double shuffle rhythm together, Okay, and then our bass drum, our Kick, is doing four on the floor, now, one way that you can start to create, this and make it more exciting, is to take some of the snare and the kick drum, parts out like we did with the extension in our last lesson, or you can add some drum fills, and that's always a great way of making it sound really stylish, and it's a bit like I'm improvising, but on the drums, and you do it in the last bar of your groups of four, so you do rhythm to chap, to rhythm, to chap, to rhythm, to chap, to bid them the fill the feel the rhythm and it carries on, let me show you, one, two, one, two normal shuffle, Okay, so I'm saying little fill, at the end of the four bars okay, and you can make your fills, whatever you want, it's a bit like you having a go at improvising on the drugs, okay, so if you want to have a go at recapping, the drum shuffle, and that's an important part, that you want to include in your accompaniment, then I suggest you practise that drum shuffle, and then adding some of your own fills, or maybe making your high hat part more complicated, or taking some of the snare and the kick beats out, same thing, I want you to pause the video now, and either grabbing your drum kit, or grab your chair drum, and practise playing that double shuffle, don't forget your accents on two and four, spend at least five minutes doing this, if you like to spend longer, that's fine, but at least five, so, that you have this basic drum double shuffle, really confident, okay, off you go, let's look at how we can take this a step further, and play them in a way, that will make them sound really stylistic, like we're really getting into the Booz groove okay, let's take the booze style baseline to begin with, we played them as broken chords, there are two ways that we can make this blue star pattern, just a bit more musical for blues, and just a bit more stylish, and it's a slightly more challenging way to play it, but I think we're ready to stretch ourselves to doing that now, this one, is to play, play the broken chord, but, swing it rather than just playing it one, two, three, four, and maybe doing it in a bit more of an interesting rhythm, the second option is to play more challenging walking baseline park, you play an ascending and descending pattern, using the notes within the chords, but there are added blues notes as well, let me show you how those two ways of playing a blue style base looks, so our first option, is you can take the notes, as they are from the course, but we pay them in a more interesting rhythm, so nice and low left-hand again, if you use a keyboard, same notes, but we're just going to put in a swung rhythm, and we're just going to vary how we play those pitches so, it's exactly the same notes, just changing the pattern, I'm playing with them, and off we go again, so that's one way you can just bury the rhythm, and the patterns that you played, it pitches in, and the other is, the other way, is you're doing, the full walking baseline scale, where you add the sixth and seventh note of the scale, let me show you really slowly, so you play the first three notes, one, three, five, you carry on up, and play the six, fourth and seven, seven, six, back down, seven, six, back down, so that's in G, now, we go to the C chord, or to the C part of the walking baseline, say rules apply, you play one, three, five, six, I'm flattened seven, but you've got two goals at that one, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven back to G, six, seven, now, we go to D, But the D, and the C in this section are exactly the same, we don't have time in the bar, to put the seventh in, saying, now we go back to six, seven, okay, I'll do that again all through, so you can see exactly how it fits without any pauses, one, two, one, two, three, four, change, back to G, normal day, all the same, back down G okay, and there is are more challenging, I think, quite interesting, and stylish sounding walking baseline, with the sixth and the seventh, note in our run, are ascending scale up and down, okay, now it's your turn to have a go, remember, you want to really think about which of these ways of playing the walking baseline, you like to maybe put into your own accompaniment, next, spend at least 10 minutes, playing through both options, and finding the way that you like, let's look at how we can make these piano chords, sound really bluesy, so, we've got two grids, hopefully you recognise both of these, the grid on the left hand side shows you the 12 bar blues, called progression, as we've learned it in G major, the grid on the right hand side is the one similar, to the one we used for the our old blues lesson, where we've added, can you see, we've added seventh notes, this makes it sound really bluesy and jazzy, we use the notes one, three, five, and seven, of this scale, for each chord, and it just makes it sound really stylish, another way that we can make these piano chords sound, more interesting, is by doing something, called vamping, vamping, is a technique where you play a repeating chord progression in a more stylistic way, following a solo player who will be improvising, so, if you have say, Miles Davis on trumpet, and he is in the flow of an improvisation, the piano player can just play, that repeated chord progression, following the 12 bars, but can start to do things with the chords, to make them sound more interesting, let's read through those four options together now, the along, you play the fourth court at the same time, I'm going to show you a demonstration of that in a moment, number two, you add the octave into the rhythm of the chords so rather than just playing the chords, as they are, as a part of your more swung stylish way, of playing the chords, you add the octave, the eighth note on top, the third option is to split the chords, which means rather than paying all three notes, at the same time, you split them, and maybe pay the top two, and then the bottom two, all the top two, and then the bottom note on their own, the fourth option is that you can use the seventh note, as a passing note into the next chord, so, if I am playing G, I will add the seventh note, and I will play it as I move into C, and that creates some really nice interest with a passing note, let me show you how to do all of these four ways of vamping to the blue style chords, say, we are on G, unless that makes it G chord, I'm just going to put the root note, of the chord G, in my left hand, just so, my tonality, my key is really clear so, I'm in G in the moment, what you do is you can include, the fourth chord in that chordal end, so, G, I go up one, two, three, four, and the fourth quarters, is C, so, we play G and C together in an interesting rhythm and that is one way of vamping, here's my G, I says, okay, this an interesting rhythm, but you add the C on top fourth end, now, C the four, one, two, three, four, is F, so, I can bounce between the C and the hat there, so, it sings like this, is bounce between C and hat, D is G, but, we don't stay on D for very long, so, often that chord just stays as it is, so I'll show, it again, really slowly, vamping using the fourth of that cord, if you choose to say, with F, back to G D is a S, so that's how you can play interesting rhythms, and then you are bumping, you are changing to the fourth chord your are on, G is C, C is F, D will stays as it is, and then we go back around, so, there's one way, if you want to have a go at playing that, the next one is that you can just build, octave notes, into the rhythm that you play those chords, in I see quite a few kinds of players do this, the same thing on G, and you can break the chords a little bit into an interesting rhythm so, we've got some triplets, that's the octave, back to G, then we go back to G, you notice this part, you triples it, okay, so there's the other way, and this one other way that you can bump around this, and don't forget if you really want to stretch yourself, you can include the seventh note in, it like we did when we were looking at all blues, so you can still the seventh note is in it, so, what I'm going to show you now, is how to add the seventh notes, but split the chord, split the chord basically means, some breaking them into three separate notes, you just split the chord, top off of the chord, run off the chord, okay, now, if you do that with the seventh, the same thing applies, you just need to make sure you put the seventh note on there change to C, top, bottom, back to G, D, the final way is using the seventh note, and other notes in the scale as passing notes, to the next chord, okay, so, if I'm on G, I use it to lead, into the next chord, use to lead, trouble it's not going, into the next chord, D, leading, back to G, okay, welcome back, well done, we've done a lot of playing I hope you're enjoying yourself, the final part is composing your own blues accompaniment, and basically you're going to take all of those ideas, that I've just given you about how to make, a blues accompaniment really stylish, and decide how you want your company to sound, and here is a few different ways that you can do that, if you're at school, or you're with other people, definitely put this into a pair, or group performance, so you could have you playing the chords, in a really bumpy style, using seventh notes as a passing notes, while somebody else in your group, plays the walking baseline, also using the seven notes, and that's how you've both decided, you want your accompaniment to sound, the other way that you could do it is you could play live, with a recorded part, okay, If you're feeling really confident, one thing you could do is play the walking baseline, with a really interesting swung rhythm and then you're using the technique of splitting the chords, in your vamp in your right hand to a drum backing track, which is other shuffle rhythm, like this one here, okay, so I've created quite a long backing track, for you there because when you're ready to go, practise it yourself, you could rewind this video, and listen to that back in track, and play and practise the other parts of the accompaniment, I'm really excited to see how you creatively decide, that you'd want to use these different techniques, to make your own music stylistic accompaniment, enjoy, well, then today, I really hope you've enjoyed the lesson, we did lots of music making today, and I basically created our own half of a blues band, playing the accompaniment path, I'm sure your performances sound great, please make sure you go and show those, or perform them with some other people at school, or in your household, please go and take the quiz and show me, everything that you've learned about blues accompaniment, and how to make it sound really stylish, and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson.

Take care, bye.