The Styles of Gospel, with Damien Sneed

dealing with gospel music I'll take the very familiar hymn amazing grace gospel music is taken from blues from jazz now gospel has been divided up into several different genres such as traditional gospel even all the way to the other extreme as gospel jazz which is a type of contemporary gospel where gospel musicians especially those that deal with cords and comping pianists and definitely on the Hammond b3 organ use a lot of styles and idioms and motifs from jazz music also from some pop music and they incorporate it into a common hem whether they're playing in the church on Sunday morning with the Gospel Brunch so for example with the Amazing Grace very familiar start with the one chord sixth minor leaflet what you'll find out from traveling across the country in different regions of the country particularly with pianists there are different voicings different chords are in the gospel music world they'll say their different sounds those sounds come from the influences of musicians like Richard Smallwood whose gospel music style is very based in classical music baroque in particular then you have people that have contributed a lot to gospel pianos such as the late great Reverend James Cleveland where they're allowed octave like this you style was also done a lot in Chicago they have something where they tell the penis to walk in the quarter note many churches in gospel music especially in the south churches didn't believe that you should have a drum set in church so early gospel music actually there was just a pianist or in some terms there might have been the guitar player of course people would clap their hands stop their feet on the one two three four like that and also many times they go play a tambourine but in the Pentecostal churches that were very charismatic they had a drum set so rhythm was not necessarily required from the pianets by playing the bass in the left hand because the organ player haven't beat the organ in the Pentecostal churches which is the main instrument he went into the Hammond organ do a lot of camping idioms in the style so for example if I were to also maybe go to the area in the Midwest in Detroit where great keyboard players and they have several YouTube clips of them such as Thomas Whitfield r:l Bernie to Twinkie Clark whose family remember the Clark Sisters you think about people like that are rudolph Stanfield are even going out to the west coast with Walter Hawkins the Hawkins family are Andre Crouch gospel music and the late 80s Early 90s started changing where certain chords that were considered to be secular out of there based on their influence we're coming in to gospel music so for example it may sound something like this I then of course more musicians especially in gospel piano begin to venture out and experiment with different pianistic risks people like kevin bond people like jason white from california musicians like this begin to add more virtuosic playing on the piano where it wasn't so much rhythmic but it was more of a melodic way of moving in the music now this melodic movement which you'll hear what I'm going to play this example of Amazing Grace this last time it begin to mimic what the vocal vocalist would do the singers with the melisma or the riff other run they do a run like and says like me very straight I'll so out of the Clark Sisters the Church of God in Christ singers begin to sing with more runs and melisma similar to what a saxophone player would do in jazz music so people like Kim Burrell as well they begin to run so the musicians begin to play more runs for example like this see I was love's butt the Blues see so it's really hard to put all this into one lesson in one sitting but gospel music really pulls from classical music pulls from jazz you'll hear swing sometimes you hear blues you will hear pop idioms in gospel music so to be a gospel musician nowadays it requires you to have an understanding of music history from the whole scope of Baroque music all the way down to things that you'd hear on the radio today even if you do the same song Amazing Grace like this so just depends but there's so many different styles of piano playing within gospel singing there's so many different styles of singing which are considered to be correct for a certain region whether it be from the southeastern region of America whether it be from the Northeast region from the DC Baltimore area where you'll find that singers and musicians definitely have a very jazz jazzy ear some regions believe that you should the sound should be more towards blues the blues runs still because they feel like that's being more correct more exact - what Goss music should be but they'll be more coming soon

Channel: Essentially Ellington

Views: 336,876

Rating: 4.9400001 out of 5

Keywords: Gospel Music (Musical Genre), Damien Sneed, jazz, blues, gospel, piano

Id: YHItWFbU7-A

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2012