What Is a Blues? The Perils of Binary Thinking
2016/06/06
The other day I had an idea for a playlist to add to my Channel at YouTube. I had been looking at examples of Rhythm & Blues for a previous blog post, "Rhythm & Blues: 30 Unearthed Gems 1949 - 1965" and began to consider the music I had rejected for not fitting the category.
I ran across some songs which shared characteristics inherited from Blues, but obviously were not. It occurred to me that some people might not even be aware of these Blues connections. As a matter of interest, and perhaps to the edification and amusement of the reader, I resolved to collect some examples. In the course of this selection process, (and while assembling the Rhythm & Blues piece) I periodically encountered debates in the Comments section over whether a piece should be categorised as R&B, Rhythm & Blues, or just a Blues, or none of them. My first reaction to these debates is one of agreement or disagreement with various commenters, but I quickly stop myself, because I know I am falling into the trap of..... |
Binary Thinking
For many decades I have held this concept in my mind as a primary consideration when thinking about practically anything. I still wonder why people get themselves into arguments that cannot be resolved, why they cannot see that the very basis of their disagreement is flawed, fallacious and misleading.
People who think in terms of Either-Or, Right and Wrong, Black and White etc. are sadly deluded as to the nature of reality. They fail to realise that the categories they are trying to shoehorn the subject into do not exist as real phenomena. They are mental constructs of the human mind and only exist as far as any one person understands what the word naming them means. Not only this, it can often be that the category itself is a mistaken definition of something which does not exist at all.
Binary Thinking often fails because it is applied to invalid questions.
Take an example I have considered before, that of the term "The Source of a River". Some people insist that this is a real thing; an arbitrary choice to follow upstream the larger of two flows entering a flow, leads eventually to some obscure trickle which is proudly named as the "discovered source" of a river. This is a preposterous idea to me when it is plain that the source of a river is better described as a particular catchment area delineated by a watershed. How can you sensibly describe the gigantic Amazon river as "coming from" one point in space, its so-called "source", which is anyway likely to be arbitrarily redefined with further exploration and mapping refinements? Furthermore, if you travel up the Amazon, enter the Rio Negro, travel upriver for 1000km, and enter the Casiquiare river, you find yourself on a tributary of the Orinoco river, which has its mouth on the shores of the Caribbean Sea, 1500 km from the mouths of the Amazon. Does this qualify the mouth of the Orinoco as "the source" of the Amazon?
The question "Where is the Amazon river?" makes this type of futility more obvious, as logical thought will get you nowhere (ha-ha) with this one.
You might be told "It is in Brazil", yet Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia all have flows leading to the Amazon.
You might argue "Ah, but after you travel upstream to Manaus, there is no Amazon, only two other rivers, the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimões", but this leaves you with a large amount of water flowing to the sea via a series of many dividing and recombining channels, and the question of which one is the Amazon.
You might go down to the bank and ask "Where is the Amazon?" and be told "Right here!"
You might retort, "But I was a hundred miles away and they said it was there!"
You might be twenty kilometers off-shore on the coast of Brazil and taste the ocean to find it is not salty. Are you still on the Amazon river? (The plume generated by the river's discharge covers up to 1.3 million square kilometers and is responsible for muddy bottoms influencing a wide area of the tropical North Atlantic in terms of salinity, pH, light penetration, and sedimentation.)
As you can see, it is a ridiculous question in the first place, and being able to form such a question using words does not make it a valid one.
Just to give one example to show I am not alone in cautioning about examining the question, here is the opening paragraph of: -
For many decades I have held this concept in my mind as a primary consideration when thinking about practically anything. I still wonder why people get themselves into arguments that cannot be resolved, why they cannot see that the very basis of their disagreement is flawed, fallacious and misleading.
People who think in terms of Either-Or, Right and Wrong, Black and White etc. are sadly deluded as to the nature of reality. They fail to realise that the categories they are trying to shoehorn the subject into do not exist as real phenomena. They are mental constructs of the human mind and only exist as far as any one person understands what the word naming them means. Not only this, it can often be that the category itself is a mistaken definition of something which does not exist at all.
Binary Thinking often fails because it is applied to invalid questions.
Take an example I have considered before, that of the term "The Source of a River". Some people insist that this is a real thing; an arbitrary choice to follow upstream the larger of two flows entering a flow, leads eventually to some obscure trickle which is proudly named as the "discovered source" of a river. This is a preposterous idea to me when it is plain that the source of a river is better described as a particular catchment area delineated by a watershed. How can you sensibly describe the gigantic Amazon river as "coming from" one point in space, its so-called "source", which is anyway likely to be arbitrarily redefined with further exploration and mapping refinements? Furthermore, if you travel up the Amazon, enter the Rio Negro, travel upriver for 1000km, and enter the Casiquiare river, you find yourself on a tributary of the Orinoco river, which has its mouth on the shores of the Caribbean Sea, 1500 km from the mouths of the Amazon. Does this qualify the mouth of the Orinoco as "the source" of the Amazon?
The question "Where is the Amazon river?" makes this type of futility more obvious, as logical thought will get you nowhere (ha-ha) with this one.
You might be told "It is in Brazil", yet Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia all have flows leading to the Amazon.
You might argue "Ah, but after you travel upstream to Manaus, there is no Amazon, only two other rivers, the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimões", but this leaves you with a large amount of water flowing to the sea via a series of many dividing and recombining channels, and the question of which one is the Amazon.
You might go down to the bank and ask "Where is the Amazon?" and be told "Right here!"
You might retort, "But I was a hundred miles away and they said it was there!"
You might be twenty kilometers off-shore on the coast of Brazil and taste the ocean to find it is not salty. Are you still on the Amazon river? (The plume generated by the river's discharge covers up to 1.3 million square kilometers and is responsible for muddy bottoms influencing a wide area of the tropical North Atlantic in terms of salinity, pH, light penetration, and sedimentation.)
As you can see, it is a ridiculous question in the first place, and being able to form such a question using words does not make it a valid one.
Just to give one example to show I am not alone in cautioning about examining the question, here is the opening paragraph of: -
Pragmatism
A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
William James
First published in 1907.
Lecture 2. What Pragmatism Means
A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
William James
First published in 1907.
Lecture 2. What Pragmatism Means
"Some years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find everyone engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel — a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree’s opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: DOES THE MAN GO ROUND THE SQUIRREL OR NOT? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Everyone had taken sides, and was obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were even. Each side, when I appeared, therefore appealed to me to make it a majority. Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows: “Which party is right,” I said, “depends on what you PRACTICALLY MEAN by ‘going round’ the squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to the east, then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north of him again, obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies these successive positions. But if on the contrary you mean being first in front of him, then on the right of him, then behind him, then on his left, and finally in front again, it is quite as obvious that the man fails to go round him, for by the compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man all the time, and his back turned away. Make the distinction, and there is no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the verb ‘to go round’ in one practical fashion or the other.”
Ref. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James at free eBools site Project Gutenberg.
Ref. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James at free eBools site Project Gutenberg.
Binary Thinking more often fails because it leads to The False Dilemma.
The False Dilemma can be described as "the result of habitual, patterned, black-and-white and/or intensely political/politicized thinking whereby a model of binary (or polar) opposites is assigned or imposed to whatever regarded object/context, almost automatically—a process that may ignore both complexity and alternatives to more extreme juxtaposed archetypes." (Wikipedia)
In more plain language, it is the result of trying to decide yes-no when you should be deciding how much, or which of many.
"Is this spoon heavier than that spoon" has an answer to within the limits of measurement, but "Is this table-cloth green or not?" once again is a question that makes no sense if you try to get precise. It can only be answered if the answer is already declared arbitrarily as a particular frequency of light amongst the infinite number of frequencies ranging between "Yellow" and "Blue. (And I bet there would be a hell of an argument if you tried to do so!)
One of the most common false dilemmas is presented by creationists in America: that if there is any flaw at all in the theories of evolution, then creation science is the only other possible truth.
I don't wish to belabour the point here, it seems so obvious that further explanation would be repetitious.
I do wish to emphasise the point here though. Despite the obviousness and simplicity of the concepts outlined above, a large part of humanity seems determined to ignore them, and persists in futile arguments like Nature vs Nurture, and in asking futile questions like "Is she is a real Jew?", "Is it a planet or not?", "Is he normal?", "Is it a tree or a shrub?", and so on.
(A word of warning: - Don't go overboard and get sucked into the woolly-minded Balance Fallacy, or "Appeal to moderation".
Just because it's the middle ground doesn't make it true. If I think the Blue team are going to win, and you think the Yellow team will, that doesn't mean the game will probably end in a tie. Nor does it mean the winner will be Green!
Or: - "Some say austerity in a depressed economy is bad. Others say austerity in a depressed economy is good. Therefore, some austerity in a depressed economy is the correct answer")
Is It The 12 Bar Form?
First, whilst trying to avoid the pitfalls above, I will try to give at least an outline of the 12 bar structure, while pointing out that it's got millions of variations within it and more variations that are slightly changed versions, not STRICTLY the 12 bar format.
I cannot read music, but I don't feel disadvantaged; nor could most of the people who developed the Blues as a form of music.
I searched YouTube and could not find anybody explaining the concept in what I would call simple terms. Nobody was using the type of language I would use if sitting down with my guitar next to a learner with their guitar, and beginning, "It's simple, you just do this, this and this, and that's all there is to it. Everything else is just elaboration from this."
One advantage that has contributed to the popularity of the guitar is that unlike many instruments, the guitar has each note allocated to a point in space, nicely laid out as a grid of frets and strings. This makes it amenable to assigning visual patterns to sound combinations and sequences. Someone can literally show you "here, here, then here".
This approach is how I learned what I play when I play Blues, coupled with much listening to records, of course. I have never had any formal lessons, just a few pointers when I was about 18 or so. I can't even remember if I worked out the 12 bar pattern for myself (I think so) or if someone showed me.
The below is a quick diagram made as simple as I can, with some explanatory text.
This diagram shows just one string, and has short lines across it representing the metal lines (frets) that the strings are shortened against to get the notes desired.
The frets are numbered sequentially L - R. Positions for the string to be pressed are shown in green.
The numbers of bars played at each green dot are shown in blue digits. (Note, they add up to 12, what a coincidence!)
A "bar" is just name for a unit of time. For our purposes we will stick with the most common unit of four beats, or strums, or plucks, or hits, or toots, or whatever. Thus we will end up with a basic unit of 48 strums in 12 lots of 4.
The red line shows the sequence of movements made back and forth along the string to select the notes desired, starting at fret 1, 4 bars.
I cannot read music, but I don't feel disadvantaged; nor could most of the people who developed the Blues as a form of music.
I searched YouTube and could not find anybody explaining the concept in what I would call simple terms. Nobody was using the type of language I would use if sitting down with my guitar next to a learner with their guitar, and beginning, "It's simple, you just do this, this and this, and that's all there is to it. Everything else is just elaboration from this."
One advantage that has contributed to the popularity of the guitar is that unlike many instruments, the guitar has each note allocated to a point in space, nicely laid out as a grid of frets and strings. This makes it amenable to assigning visual patterns to sound combinations and sequences. Someone can literally show you "here, here, then here".
This approach is how I learned what I play when I play Blues, coupled with much listening to records, of course. I have never had any formal lessons, just a few pointers when I was about 18 or so. I can't even remember if I worked out the 12 bar pattern for myself (I think so) or if someone showed me.
The below is a quick diagram made as simple as I can, with some explanatory text.
This diagram shows just one string, and has short lines across it representing the metal lines (frets) that the strings are shortened against to get the notes desired.
The frets are numbered sequentially L - R. Positions for the string to be pressed are shown in green.
The numbers of bars played at each green dot are shown in blue digits. (Note, they add up to 12, what a coincidence!)
A "bar" is just name for a unit of time. For our purposes we will stick with the most common unit of four beats, or strums, or plucks, or hits, or toots, or whatever. Thus we will end up with a basic unit of 48 strums in 12 lots of 4.
The red line shows the sequence of movements made back and forth along the string to select the notes desired, starting at fret 1, 4 bars.
The 12 bar pattern is basically just playing 4 bars while shortening the string at 1, moving to 5 for 2 bars, back to 1 for 2 bars, then to 7 for 1 bar, 5 for 1 bar, and back to 1 for 2 bars.
Even more simply, from start at 1, go along to 5, back to 1, along to 7, along to 5, and back to 1, (the number of bars you now know)
Even more simply as Go up 5, back, up 7, down 2, back. (We are now saying up and down as in high & low notes)
This really not hard to learn, 30 seconds or so.
Once you know this you can play as many as 6 strings at once! Following the same pattern! Using chords!
OR! you can move the start point along as many frets as you have, to the left or right,
keeping the same relationship of start, up 5, back, up 7, down 2, down 5.
(Technically, this is called "changing key".)
Even more simply, from start at 1, go along to 5, back to 1, along to 7, along to 5, and back to 1, (the number of bars you now know)
Even more simply as Go up 5, back, up 7, down 2, back. (We are now saying up and down as in high & low notes)
This really not hard to learn, 30 seconds or so.
Once you know this you can play as many as 6 strings at once! Following the same pattern! Using chords!
OR! you can move the start point along as many frets as you have, to the left or right,
keeping the same relationship of start, up 5, back, up 7, down 2, down 5.
(Technically, this is called "changing key".)
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At Left is a more formal explanation which presumes some familiarity with formal musical terms.
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From the above it can be seen that it is not difficult to determine if a piece of music conforms to the 12 bar format or not, or if it closely resembles it, or if it seems to be only based on and similar to the format.
Is It The Blues?
I am not going to try and define The Blues for you.
Any book or searchable website will try to define Blues, but they all get rather wordy, precisely because it is not a neat box which something is in or out of, it is a social phenomenon of vast complexity and many subtle variations.
There are many "Blues" which do not follow, nor even approach, the musical pattern said to typify the genre: the "12 Bar Blues".
Conversely, there are many pieces of music which follow a 12 bar format, using the same chord structure,
yet are not considered to be "a Blues", or "the Blues".
Below are two playlists: "12 Bars, Not Blues", and "Blues, Not 12 Bars.
This is a legitimate distinction, as we have established above, the 12 bar format has a definition we can apply.
These illustrate the futility of arguing over what is and isn't Blues, since neither conform to the Blues stereotype,
yet both have claims to be Blues numbers at core, under two different criteria!
If you watch nothing else, check out Beth Hart's awesome and powerful version of "I'd Rather Go Blind", No.2 on the right.
Any book or searchable website will try to define Blues, but they all get rather wordy, precisely because it is not a neat box which something is in or out of, it is a social phenomenon of vast complexity and many subtle variations.
There are many "Blues" which do not follow, nor even approach, the musical pattern said to typify the genre: the "12 Bar Blues".
Conversely, there are many pieces of music which follow a 12 bar format, using the same chord structure,
yet are not considered to be "a Blues", or "the Blues".
Below are two playlists: "12 Bars, Not Blues", and "Blues, Not 12 Bars.
This is a legitimate distinction, as we have established above, the 12 bar format has a definition we can apply.
These illustrate the futility of arguing over what is and isn't Blues, since neither conform to the Blues stereotype,
yet both have claims to be Blues numbers at core, under two different criteria!
If you watch nothing else, check out Beth Hart's awesome and powerful version of "I'd Rather Go Blind", No.2 on the right.
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