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Hi everyone.

I'm Miss Friar, and welcome to lesson nine, where we have been exploring blues all through this unit, unit three.

We're going to be looking at a really great piece of blues music today, but let's get warmed up and get into a musical mood, thinking about blues style.

Do you know what time signature means? Hopefully, you're telling me and telling the screen right now that time signature means how many beats there are in a bar.

A lot of the time, we work in four beats in a bar.

One, two, three, four.

One two, three, four.

Today we're going to be working in six.

And when you work in six, it can feel a little bit like three.

A bit like a dancing waltz.

One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three.

Let's just clap that, so we can really get into a six beats in a bar mindset.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, join in with me and put emphasis on one, four.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Stop.

Great.

So now we're in that six bar, six beats in a bar feel.

What we're going to do now is add a little vocal line to it, which hopefully we're going to use later on in the piece.

We're going to have a go at singing in harmony today.

Really simple, nothing too complicated, but it's always good to get our ears in tune before we start our music lesson.

So there's two parts to learn, then hopefully we can have a go at singing in harmony.

The first one is this.

That's it, just four notes.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ I'm doing it on a dah.

If you want to pick a different sound, that's absolutely fine.

I've just decided I'm going to do it on a dah.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ Remember we're in six.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ So each of your dahs or doos or las or fas or whatever sound you've chosen, the pitch is.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ Okay, you're going to pick three beats per pitch.

You don't have to go.

♪ Dah ♪ That was me just showing you.

Okay.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ It's the first one.

Let's do a little call and response.

See if you've got those pitches in your head.

Me first.

♪ One, two, three, four, five, six ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ You'll go.

♪ One, two, three, four, five, six ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ Lovely.

Let's try the harmony line.

Okay, so we're going up in pitch.

We're starting on.

♪ D this time ♪ Same pattern though.

We're just starting on a higher note.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ My go first.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ You're go.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ Lovely.

Okay, let's see if we can put those two parts together.

Let me show you how it sounds.

I'll show you on the keyboard 'cause I can't sing two pitches at the same time.

We're going to do that together in a minute.

So together, it sounds like this.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Okay, and it just repeats over.

We're singing a little riff.

♪ So that's our starting note we're going to sing there ♪ ♪ La, la, la, la ♪ I'll play the higher line on top.

♪ One, two, three, four, five, six ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ Why don't you have a go singing the same part as me.

♪ We're starting on B ♪ But I'll play the D part on top.

Here we go.

♪ There's our starting note ♪ ♪ Singing with me ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, five, six ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ Let's try swapping over.

So now we're going to sing the higher part, but I'll play the lower part.

So we're going to sing.

♪ Dah ♪ Here we go.

One, two, three, four, five.

Let me give you a note.

♪ One, two, three, four, five, six ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ Good, great harmonising.

Let's see if we can do it just once through us singing different parts.

So I'll sing the higher part and you see the lower part.

♪ Ah ♪ Here we go.

Here's your note.

♪ Dah ♪ Here we go, you lower, me higher.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ ♪ Dah ♪ I know I can't hear you, but I'm sure we're harmonising lovely, and you sound brilliant.

Thank you for doing a bit of singing with me first thing in our lesson.

Let's go on and see what you need to get ready, so you have a great lesson today.

In this lesson, you are going to need the following resources for it to go really well.

You're going to need 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 I suggest a different coloured pen so that you can make any corrections and mark your work.

And then for the music making parts of our lesson, there are a few options for you.

You can either use your voice to play these parts.

You're going to need access to either a piano keyboard or a keyboard app.

And also you could use a instrument of your choice for some of the parts that we're going to learn today.

So if you have an instrument at home or at school that you'd like to try, you could always use that.

If you need to pause the video now and go and get things on that list, please do so.

Or if you're all ready, let's carry on.

Okay, let's have a look at the order of our lesson for today.

The first thing we're going to do is have a look at what is "All Blues." "All Blues" is the name of a particular song that we're going to explore and learn how to play today.

Then we're going to analyse the features and what makes this piece of music sound really bluesy.

And then finally, you're going to have a go at playing some of the parts from this song.

Really excited to show you how to play this piece today.

Let's get started.

So we're going to hear a 30-second clip from the song.

You've got four questions to answer there.

Read through those now on the left-hand side.

Remember, this is really active listening.

So keep these four questions in your mind while you are listening to the different parts of the piece you can hear and kind of breaking it down so you can answer those questions.

Here we go.

Make sure you're writing down your answers and I'll play the clip for you again in just a moment.

You might need to tap your foot or maybe click fingers, nod your head to try and feel how many beats there are in a bar, whether there were three, four or six.

Okay.

Here's the clip for the second time.

Pause the video now and take two minutes to finish writing your answers.

Come back, press play, and we'll go through those together.

Okay, let's go through those answers.

Number one, describe the piano part.

It is heard at the beginning.

So I was looking for a particular device that's right at the start of that introduction.

And we're looking for a tremolo.

That is a wobble between two notes.

So the pianist is going la, la, la, la, la, la.

So it's like wobbling, twiddling between those two notes.

And that's what the piano player is playing at the very start during that introduction.

So if you didn't get tremolo, don't worry.

But if you could recognise that he was sort of twiddling and wobbling between two notes, well done.

The drummer is not using drumsticks.

What do you think he's using instead? It's a particular type of musical equipment or drums. The answer is brush sticks.

Okay.

So it's like drumsticks, they've got handles at the bottom, but at the top, there's sort of prongs of thin metal wires and they kind of sweep those metal wires across.

Those metal rods across the snare drum and that's how you get that kind of sweeping sound.

So if you got brushed sticks, well done.

How many beats in a bar are there? So we're used to often working in four beats in a bar.

One two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

The answer for "All Blues" is six.

And because there's six crotchets in a bar, six over four, it feels like three.

It feels like one, two, three, one, two, three.

Let me show you.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Okay, and that's how it fits.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

If you got that, great job.

And then number four, name two melody instruments you can hear.

So they were playing the bah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

It was, in fact, two saxophones were playing that riff after the piano and the drums were playing and they repeat that pattern in a harmony part.

Well done if you got any of those.

Make sure that you've written down the answers in your different colour pen so you've got notes to revise.

It's the best way to help us remember this information about the song "All Blues." Great.

Okay.

Why are we looking "All Blues?" Why is that a particularly interesting or impressive piece of blues music? I'm just going to read through this paragraph and there are one, two, three, four, five words missing, and they are in the blue box below.

So what I'd like you to do is to write this paragraph out and fill in the gaps, choosing the words at the bottom.

The song "All Blues" is from the album "Kind Of Blue." It is said that Miles Davis gave the other players in the band the and just a short time before recording.

These were the.

That the musicians would use to.

In the song.

The entire album was recorded with very little rehearsal.

And Was recorded on the second take.

When I first learned this about "All Blues," I couldn't believe it.

These musicians must be some kind of super band to put this amazing blues piece together with very little rehearsal and to go into the studio and to record it the second time that they've played it.

So they would have rehearsed a little bit, recorded it once and said, okay, let's do it again.

Recorded it for a second time.

That's the second take.

And they all went, yes, okay, I'm happy with that.

Completely unheard of.

Just think why would that be so hard? Why does that take so much skill to be able to produce a piece of music like that with such little rehearsal? That's why blues musicians are just so impressive.

Pause the video and spend two minutes just filling in those gaps if you haven't done so already.

Okay, let's fill those words in.

So the song "All Blues" is from the album "Kind Of Blue." It is said that Miles Davis gave the other players in the band the scales and melodies, just a short time before recording.

So within just very little notice the players got the scales and the melodies that they were expecting to play.

These were the ideas that the musicians would use to improvise, good, in the song.

So we know improvisation is used a lot.

And so basically just before they went into the studio, Miles Davis said here are the scales and the melodies, and they would have just known how to improvise with those without really having to practise it before coming to the studio.

Absolutely amazing.

The entire album was recorded with very little rehearsal and yeah, "All Blues" is the one left, was recorded on the second take.

Give yourself lots of ticks if you got all those fill the gaps correct.

If you need to correct any, write them down.

And I hope you've enjoyed learning a bit more about the piece "All Blues." Okay.

We are now in the second part of our lesson for today, We've learned a little bit about what "All Blues" is and now we're going to analyse the actual features, so that we can go on to play them ourselves.

Right? Okay.

Let's listen to another clip from "All Blues." We're going to listen to 30 seconds now where it's actually the part where Miles Davis comes in playing the trumpet.

And we will hear the entire blues structure in this clip.

The question I want you to answer on your piece of paper, or on the worksheet, is what features can you hear in "All Blues" are typical of blues music? We've learned so much about what we expect to hear in blues music.

I want you to tell me what you can recognise in "All Blues." There's a few ideas on the left-hand side.

Think about melody, harmony, instrumentation, and structure.

And I just want you to bullet point what you can hear that sounds really bluesy in this piece.

Here we go.

Great, lovely stuff.

Start to jot down your ideas.

I'm going to play the clip again for you.

And then you're going to need to pause the video and finish writing your answers.

Here's the clip for the second time.

Oh, such a good piece.

Okay, pause the video now and finish writing what you think are the typical blues features you could hear.

Take two minutes, press play, and then we'll come back.

Great.

Okay, let's go through our answers of what I think I can hear.

I'm sure you've got some similar ideas.

The first thing that we can definitely hear in "All Blues" is that it has a head.

We looked at what a blues head is.

It's a melody that repeats throughout, and it's kind of the theme of the song.

And actually in "All Blues," it's the entire 12 bar trumpet line.

And we're going to have a go at playing that in a moment and I'm excited to do that.

There's also a riff that is played throughout.

It's the two saxophones that you can hear.

♪ Bah dah dah dah dah ♪ That riff comes back throughout the piece.

Well done if you recognise that there was a main tune or a main melody, a head, that repeated.

The next thing is for instrumentation.

And you can hear that there are typical blues band instruments that you expect to hear.

Trumpet, saxophones, bass, piano, and drums. Well done if you listed any of those instruments because they are typically found in a blues band.

Next on my list is that this piece also follows a 12 bar blues structure with a repetitive baseline.

So there are a set of chords and a repeating baseline in this piece, just like we would hear in other blues pieces.

The baseline is ever so slightly different, and we'll explore that in a minute.

The final thing I could recognise is that there were swung rhythms. ♪ Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah ♪ ♪ Long, short, long, short ♪ And there's a shuffle , okay, in the drums as well.

So well done if you could recognise those swung rhythms that we expect to hear.

If you didn't get any of those, please write them down.

It's really important that you know what the key features are in "All Blues" because we're going to play those in a moment.

Right.

Final part of the lesson.

Probably the biggest part of the lesson is us learning to play the parts we've heard in those clips.

Okay.

First thing that we're going to look at is harmony and 12 bar blues.

Brilliantly, "All Blues" is also in G major, which is the key, that's the tonality, that we've been playing our bluesy performances in so far.

The grid on the left-hand side is following the standard G major 12 bar blues chord progression.

G chord one, C chord four, D chord five.

Have a look at the grid on the right-hand side.

This is the harmony for "All Blues." Take 30 seconds and see if you can spot two differences.

Okay, hopefully, the biggest difference that you can see and you've spotted is that each of those chords has a number seven next to it.

Do you know what that means? What do you think a seventh might mean? Think about what we've learned about blues scales and bluesy notes.

Hopefully, you'll remember that seventh means the seventh note in this scale.

Okay.

So you actually played four notes on the keyboard for the "All Blues" harmony.

Well done if you got that.

Great technical understanding of harmonies and chords and scales.

The other difference I wanted to highlight that these have two different chords.

So instead of just playing chord four again.

Here.

Instead, Miles Davis decides to have a slightly different transition where you could play the chord E flat and D7.

So you play two chords in one bar, and I'll show you an example of that in a moment, then go on to G7 and then play G7 again, or D7, which is the turnaround.

So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to give you a full demonstration of how to play these chords and the baseline.

I'm going to model it, and then you're going to play it and all tradition.

Exactly like blues musicians would do it.

Okay.

Let's have a go.

Let's go through that together now.

So we'll do the chords first and then we'll go onto the base.

So for the chord, you want to follow the same structure.

G, G, C, C, C, C, G, G, G.

D, D, D, G, G.

Okay, so that's it really sped up, but we need to put the seventh note on top.

Okay.

So I'll run through that first.

There's our G major chord.

G, B, D.

To add the seventh, you put the F on top.

Then we have the chord of C.

I'm going to do it inverted, like I've shown you in the lesson before.

So inverted.

C, E, G.

I've just got G in the bottom.

But we need to add the seventh, which is B flat.

We've got D, which is our other chord.

D, F sharp, A, and I'm going to play it here.

F sharp first.

The seventh note is this C.

Great.

So there are our three main ones, but he does, he, Miles Davis, does also put in an E flat, which is E flat, G, B flat.

But again, I'm going to invert it to make it easier.

'cause I'm here at D.

I can go just here ♪ G, B flat, B flat ♪ And the seventh note to add to that is D flat.

So the whole structure really slowly is this.

Now remember, what is our time signature? It is six beats in a bar.

So we can't just count.

One, two, three, four, one, two for each bar.

It needs to be.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

So there's my four Gs.

Now I change to two Cs.

Two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, back to G7.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Now the last row of that structure was D7, D, C.

Then he goes to E flat seven and D7 again in one bar.

So you're going to need to count three beats each.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

Then back in G.

Three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

So here it is again, the full structure.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Get ready to change to C.

Two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, back two.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Here comes that last line.

Three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Great, so there's a demonstration of the whole 12 bar structure, but we're following the seventh chord pattern and that interesting , at the end.

Okay, and that's in bar, I forget every time, 10.

Okay, bar 10.

Remember, you can take it nice and slow.

That's quite a tricky key change.

Remember, you can take it nice and slow.

That's quite a tricky chord change, that's a mouthful.

Quite a tricky chord.

Why can't I say that today? Quite tricky chord change.

♪ E flats are there ♪ ♪ D7 ♪ You might just want to spend some time practising just that change.

Okay.

So that's the chords.

The interesting thing about the baseline for "All Blues" is it follows a sort of ascending, descending, walking baseline pattern.

Remember the other one? The previous one we learned was this.

Just taking the notes of the chords.

All right.

Now, the interesting thing that Miles Davis does with "All Blues" is he decides that he really likes a particular rhythm.

Really swung.

So it's G, D, E, D, F.

D, E, D, G.

And he gets the bass player to play this throughout pretty much the entire song.

Until the very last four bars, that last row, where we have the One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four.

So until the last four bars where he has some kind of very basic, we'll do a simple version, he just follows the chords.

So all of a sudden it kind of stops and the baseline just goes and we're just going to follow the pattern.

E flat.

And then return back to.

Okay, and it's pretty much that all the way through.

So, it's this.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

All the way through until the last four bars.

And he just follows the pattern of the core structure.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two.

And then he returns.

Okay, so the whole baseline structure on keyboard is like this.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

So this is where Porter would change to a C, but he keeps the base going like this.

Now I'm coming to that last section.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

Okay, and that's the whole thing.

That's the whole 12 bars.

Together, it sounds like this.

So the baseline with the chords.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

40 changed to C, base stays the same.

Oh.

Here comes the change in the base.

Okay, so really simple repeated baseline all the way.

Off you go, practise the baseline first, then have a go at those seventh chords following the 12 bar blues structure.

And please do make sure you get your fingers around that E flat, D7, back to G7.

Okay, you're going to probably need to practise that a few times.

Have fun with it.

Off you go.

Spend 15 minutes.

'Cause we've got two parts to learn there, practising both of them and seeing if you can play them together, either on your own or in a pair.

All right, off you go.

Okay.

The next part that we're going to learn in "All Blues" is that saxophone riff we heard right at the start.

There are two saxophones.

They're playing the same riff, but in harmony.

Quick recap, what does riff mean? Write it down or tell the screen in five, four, three, two, one.

Yes, great.

A riff is a repeating musical pattern.

We should have that definition really locked in our brains now.

So the saxophone riff is two saxophone players basically playing the same part, but they are playing three notes apart from one another.

From my demonstration, this is how it's written out on a score.

♪ Bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah ♪ If you follow my ones and twos, saxophone one's in green saxophone, two is in purple, you'll see how they work together.

So they played B and D.

♪ Bah bam ♪ And they both go up a step to C and D.

♪ Bam ♪ Then they go up again to D and F.

♪ Bam ♪ And then they come back down to C and E.

Okay, I'll show you again.

♪ Bah bam bah bam ♪ And then they just repeat it.

Good.

Hopefully we've understood how this part works.

And you can play this on your own.

It's really simple.

You're just playing two notes at the same time.

So get yourself onto a keyboard or a keyboard app and have a go at playing that saxophone riff that we hear at the start of "All Blues".

So the next part that we're going to learn to play is the main 12 bar melody, or the head.

Miles Davis decides that the head section, or theme, will include the saxophones playing the riff, which we've just learnt, and a 12 bar long melody played by the trumpet.

What do you notice about the notes in the head melody? Take 30 seconds just think about it.

What do you notice about the notes, the pitches, in the head melody.

We know the notes in the melody, the pitches in the melody, are all going to be quite close together when we play them.

Let's have a look at that melody now.

Here it is written out on to a score.

Now the most important thing that we have to remember is that we have to have it in that six beats in a bar feel.

It needs to feel like one, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Let me show you how this is played on my flute.

So here is the main head, the 12 bar head melody, that is originally played on trumpet.

I'm going to play it on flute because that's my chosen instrument.

And I'd want you to do the same with whatever your instrument is at home.

Remember, you've always got the option to sing it, if that's your instrument, or you can use a keyboard or a piano or a piano app.

Okay.

So remember we have to keep it in our mind that it is in six.

So it's going to sound like one, two, three, four, five, six.

Try and follow it as I go along.

So as you hear the pitches change in my melody, it means that the pitch, the note, is going to have changed on the screen.

♪ Bah ♪ ♪ Dah dah dah ♪ ♪ Dah dah dah ♪ Okay, so try and follow it as you go along.

So you can recognise hearing the notes while following the score.

Make sure I'm in tune.

Okay, here we go.

From the top.

One, two, three, four, five.

Okay, so there's the whole tune.

I hope followed it as you went along.

How I'm playing the notes, the full length of that note, I'm playing really legato.

Smooth.

All the notes are sort of held together because that's how Miles Davis plays it on the trumpet in the original recording.

Enjoy playing through the head.

It's a really lovely melody to play.

Spend a good 10 minutes seeing how much of that "All Blues" head melody you can learn.

Off you go.

I hope that you've really enjoyed today's lesson.

Well done for all your work.

I'm sure all of the parts of "All Blues" are sounding great on whichever instrument you've been playing them on.

Please go and take the quiz, so you can show me everything that you've learned about this piece.

And I hope to see you in the next lesson.

Take care, bye.

I've finished the video