A shortcoming with the blues...

This post expresses what I consider to be a shortcoming with the genre of blues music as I'm familiar with this form of music. But the same arguments may well apply to other forms of music too. The intention here is certainly not to single out the blues for criticism.

Consider the following standard 12 bar blues chord progression:

Am (2) Am7 (2)

Dm (1) Dm7 (1) [First change: 1 to 4]

Am (1) Am7 (1) [Second change: 4 to 1]

Em7 (1) Dm7 (1) Am7 (1) Em7 (1) [Closing with a turnaround 5 to 4 to 1 to 5]

Now this 12 bar structure must have been an innovation at some point in time, and I compliment the blues community for making it, but a whole lot of blues musicians are still stuck at it (or minor variants of it)! Why? Write down all the chords that you can form from the notes of the blues scale, innovate further, write blues songs with more interesting chord progressions and closures!

Talking about the blues scale, another innovation was the discovery of the blue note. Again, I compliment the blues community for making this innovation. But it is crazy how they keep going "Oh the blues, oh the blues, there's no other music like the blues..."

Why? Haven't other parts of the world innovated? Why is the blues scale "more important" than scales in the middle east or eastern parts of the world? Consider the scale C D E G B C for example. Just play it for a while and you'll see that it's beautiful too, it has its own feel, its own ambience! Why would it be any less or more important than any other scale?

Cultish mindsets are best avoided! If we musicians won't be open and bring the world together through perhaps the only language that has the power to unite and heal today - the language of music - then who will?

And even for a #musician at an individual level, I'm unable to understand why you would devote your entire life to just one or two scales? Why would you want to "exclusively" be a blues, or country, or rock, or jazz, etc., musician? Why? Over 30-40 years of playing music, why wouldn't you diversify, why wouldn't you pick up interesting scales and sounds from all over the world and enrich yourself?

[Note: I'm of course talking within the context of the equal temperament system of western music in this post. That other temperaments exist and have their own place in music is in itself something worth elaborating upon, but I leave that for another post.]

[I also invite you to read: Keep Your Emotional Self Intact