Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
That's neat.
Does anyone know why we expect a certain musical progression which is satisfied by the 12 bar progression.
Alex
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I imagine that you have heard 12 bar progressions so often they feel natural - it happens to me too. Often I expect a chord change at a certain time without even noticing that the tune is a 12 bar. However 12 bar is not the only convention. I play old fiddle tunes on my mando and those tunes are normally 2 lots of 16 bars. The tunes generally have an A part and a B part, each of 16 bars, and you play AABB (you play each part twice so you can get it right once
). Once you are in that world then 16 bars sounds natural.
On a related note (yuk, what a bad pun) I also recall listening to an interview with Dave Brubeck, who of course used uncommon time signatures. He spoke of going to the Balkans and meeting old fiddlers who naturally jammed in 9/8 - because that is what they had grown up hearing. I am however pretty much stuck in 4/4. I can play a few tunes in 3/4, one in 6/8 and the bass line from Money (7/4 with a bit of 8/4 and 6/4) but that's it. If you are a blues player it's pretty likely that you too are stuck in 4/4.