Jimmy J & the IT's

Jimmy J & the IT’s


Jimmy J & the IT's band video

Genre: R & B, 1960’s.

The basic I, IV, V, chord progression that features throughout popular music styles of the last 70+ years, has it’s roots in The Blues. Though the Blues has never been a mainstream popular music style in Western Music, the structures, chord progressions, melodic lines and basic scales associated with this genre have provided a fundamental resource to a significant number of derivative music genres such as Country and Rock.

The intention in writing this piece is to introduce the fundamental 12 bar structure, together with the associated chord changes. There is also a discrete intro and outro section that stands outside of the 12 bar structure. In compositional terms, this intro and outro section demonstrates the flexibility of the structural mechanism.

The melodic material feature a number of Blues derivative techniques:

1. Call and response. Phrase 1 extends over 4 bars and features a declamatory highly rhythmic, ascending melodic statement. This is answered by a more lyrical, extended phrase based around repeated minor 3^rd’s. 

2. Juxtaposing major & minor. The flattened minor 3^rd in the melody is performed over the major 3^rd’s of the chord structure.

3. Scale. All melodic material is based on notes of the Blues scale; the flattened 3^rd, flattened 5^th and the flattened 7^h together with a major 6^th. 

4. The first melodic phrase repeats over the next 4 bars without modulation even though the chords underneath have modulated up 1x 4^th to the dub dominant.

The final melodic phrase, bars 9 – 12 features a new melodic idea, featuring a flattened 5^th tone, followed by the latter answering motif of phrase 1, thus creating an overall sense of melodic continuity.        

The phrasing of the melodic ideas is important for the performers to observe. There is a deliberate contrast between the short clipped notes at the beginning of the phrase and the legato extended notes at the end of the phrase.

The instrumentation features drums and bass locked into a 60’s style groove with Hammond organ playing the melody and providing a sparse chordal backing. There is also a rhythm guitar part which is eq’d quite heavily (all bass and low mid tones removed) to provide a Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MG’s). type ‘jangly’ sound, authentic to the period.

I have also included a lead violin part as I want to create the opportunity for violin players to work alongside rock musicians. Also the violin brings out the intended melodic phrasing beautifully.

Key elements for learning: blues structure, blues scale, melodic phrasing, contrasting phrasing, modulation.