Thanks B3 & T-Block. T-Block, I asked u about this before but I am looking for a more in depth response. I think "Blues" or "Boogie-wookie" sounds right. I didn't think that her style would be coined as such- but it sounds appropriate.
I thought it was some special gospel genre that I did not know about. Does anybody play like this anymore?
Is this how people used to play gospel back in the day? I know early Ray Charles had a similar sound and he said he pulled his style from gospel music. However, his music just sounds like "blues" to me. If what he is saying is true, then this music was probably called "gospel" before it ever got the blues/boogie name.
O.K. Virtuenow, me let explain (to the best of my music knowledge) a little bit what's going on here. For the most part, this style of music uses very basic chords, but you just playing them 10x faster than normal so it seems like more is being played than it really is. You remember that post on Congregational Songs I did in the Piano Room? Well, I got on there alternating minor 1 and minor 2 chords. A lot of that is being played in this music, along with an accompanied bass line and the pentatonic scale for improvisation purposes.
That goes for the songs in major keys. On the songs in minor keys, they still use basic chords, but it's mostly minor 1, minor 4, then that dominant 7th chord to get back to the beginning. I'd say bout 80% of the hymns used these chords because they were passed down during the slavery days. So, it got that depressing waiting-to-be-delivered tone to the music.
I believe the purpose of this style of music back in the day was to be as simple as possible so that the lyrics of the song overshadowed the instrumental music that accompanied it. Of course, just because they only playing basic chords don't mean they couldn't put no "stank" on it, LOL. Plus, that pentatonic scale being played in octaves really high on the piano while running the bass in the LH made for some spectacular improvisation moments.
There are people who still play like this, mainly the people who grew up in this era and learned this style of music. Music hasn't really changed that much, except for the addition of more altered chords and fancier runs. It's all in how you play whether or not a particular style can be conveyed. I would do a post on it, but I'm not sure if I can effectively teach this right now. Maybe later I'll come up wit something.
