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June 2

'Slashing' in blues

(From Talk:R. L. Burnside) Robert Palmer and everyone after him described the elements of R. L. Burnside's music as "Droning and Slashing". I get the Drone (music), it's a simple concept and easily heard. Now about slash, do you believe what is meant is Slash chord? Can someone with musical education testify if that's important here? Or is it just pictorial description of the music, maybe derived from the way Burnside acts around a guitar.

More generally, which of this two elements should be connected with hill country blues as a style? I think drone is common elsewhere too, although maybe not as prominent, but again don't know about slash. trespassers william (talk) 21:52, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just speculating here, but you can pull up videos of Burnside playing on YouTube (Alan Lomax filmed him in the 1970s, and many of those videos are available on the official Lomax Archive YouTube channel). Based on what I see in his playing style, he has a distinctly staccato method of playing guitar, one could certainly call that "slashing" I suppose. The drone effect is also quite evident. He gets the drone on his bass strings, while "slashing" on his upper strings. He's playing almost all of his chords and melody on those three upper strings, leaving the bass strings open the whole time to give that drone effect. Based on that, I'd guess he's probably playing some non-standard tuning, probably Drop D tuning which would make give him a D5 chord "drone" if he left those open all the time on his strums. Looking at his other fingering, (and this is again me guessing, because I usually only play in standard tuning myself), it looks like he's probably actually playing an open tuning something like Open D tuning. Elmore James, another famous bluesman, notably favored Open D. Just some ideas. --Jayron 32 06:03, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So these are two different issues right? The staccato is what I thought of when first read the "drone and slash " description: it's about cutting the duration of the chord (maybe he even mutes the string at the end of a chord?). But the slashing is about using some strings in the chord, and leaving the others free to drone. Is that what's described in Slash chord. trespassers william (talk) 15:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, links to slash chord here seem wrong. It's linked in the Elmore James article, but the name "slash chord" comes from a particular way of notating music for amateur guitar players, which I'm not sure was used particularly with early 20th century bluesmen, who were largely taught not through formal music education, with training in music theory and the like. Most were taught to play by ear, and developed their own styles through a combination of mimicry and improvisation and the like. I'm not even sure the name "slash chord" is that old, it's a fairly recent bit of informal slang for what is known to actual music types as an inversion. Drone is a much older, more universal musical term for a constant tone within a composition, lots of instruments include natural drones (from the Bagpipes to the 5-string banjo). In describing the playing technique of guitarists, the terms for playing style almost never refer to any arcane term from music theory, but rather to the physical way the instrument is played (i.e. clawhammer, or flatpicking, or bass strum, etc) That's why I'm fairly certain the word "slash" in "slash and drone" refers to the physical way he plays the instrument, not in how he constructs the chords he is playing. --Jayron 32 00:41, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More speculation, but maybe it's related to slash notation, which is used in musical notation as an abbreviation for repeated chords. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:56, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why repeated chords? The article says players should improvise there, no? But as a chord is given above, is only the bass available for improv? trespassers william (talk) 15:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The rhythm of the chord progression is fixed, but the rhythm of the solo or comping can be improvised as desired. My guess is that the term "droning and slashing" for the style is not closely related to the slash chord or the slash notation, but merely an evocative term. Many musical style terms don't have literal meanings in music theory, e.g. grunge, shoegaze, etc. Those are genre terms but I think the same applies to playing styles. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:59, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all. A correspondence with a published expert confirms: it's about the wide movements, not the sound. trespassers william (talk) 00:59, 5 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]