Blues and All that Jazz!

But here are other great reasons to learn about blues and jazz year 'round.

There is a wealth of music that can be used to celebrate Black History Month during the month of February. Blues offers elements of simplicity through it's chordal structure and lyrics. Whereas Jazz, offers more complicated rhythms, full of infectious and tantalizing syncopation! When I explain syncopation to my elementary students, I call it "off-beat" accents. It's the kind of rhythm that makes you want to tap your toe and shake your "booty". The element of improvisation is also presented during the month of February. This opens up a world of exploration for the children. We write a "sound" story. It's a story about anything that involves music and the story has to have words that are repeated throughout the article. After the story is written, we choose either a "vocal sound" or an instrument to accompany or represent the repeated words in the story. The spontaneity of what is played or spoken is the element of improvisation. I tell the students that improvisation is "creating music on the spot". There are no composed notes to read so the sounds and rhythms change each time the story is read. After improvisation is explored, we move on to a 12 bar blues song.

For those of you that aren't aware of the blues song structure, it is simply this:

The first two lines are the same in words and the chord structure shifts from the root to the subdominant. The third line finishes the thought of the first two lines and completes the chord structure format. The standard chordal structure: Root (I) Subdominant (IV) Root (I) Dominant (V) Subdominant (IV) Root (I). Now if that's "Greek" to you, you can check out the music links that are supplied in the Music Education section of Suite 101 or you can visit my homepage for more information.

(Chords are written above the phrases.)