Blue Note
Blue Note
Blue Note
In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note that—for expressive purposes—is sung or played at a slightly
different pitch from standard. Typically the alteration is between a quartertone and a semitone, but this
varies depending on the musical context.
Like the blues in general, the blue notes can mean many things. One quality that they all have in
common, however, is that they are lower than one would expect, classically speaking. But this
flatness may take several forms. On the one hand, it may be a microtonal affair of a quarter-tone
or so. Here one may speak of neutral intervals, neither major nor minor. On the other hand, the
lowering may be by a full semitone—as it must be, of course, on keyboard instruments. It may
involve a glide, either upward or downward. Again, this may be a microtonal, almost
imperceptible affair, or it may be a slur between notes a semitone apart, so that there is actually
not one blue note but two. A blue note may even be marked by a microtonal shake of a kind
common in Oriental music. The degrees of the mode treated in this way are, in order of
frequency, the third, seventh, fifth, and sixth.
— Peter van der Merwe (1989), Origins of the Popular Style, p. 119
In the case of the lowered third over the root (or the lowered seventh over the dominant), the resulting chord
is a neutral mixed third chord.
Blue notes are used in many blues songs, in jazz, and in conventional popular songs with a "blue" feeling,
such as Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather". Blue notes are also prevalent in English folk music.[5] Bent or
"blue notes", called in Ireland "long notes", play a vital part in Irish music.[6]
The blue "lowered third" has been speculated to be from 7 ⁄6 (267 cents)[9][10] to 350 cents[12] above the
tonic tone. It has recently been found empirically to center at 6 ⁄5 (316 cents, a minor third in just intonation,
or a slightly sharp minor third in equal temperament) based on cluster analysis of a large number of blue
notes from early blues recordings.[17] This note is commonly slurred with a major third justly tuned at 5 ⁄4
(386 cents)[17] in what Temperley et al.[18] refer to as a "neutral third". This bending or glide between the
two tones is an essential characteristic of the blues.[2][3][9][10][11]
The blue "lowered fifth" has been found to be quite separate from the perfect fifth and clusters with the
perfect fourth with which it is commonly slurred. This "raised fourth" is most commonly expressed at 7 ⁄5
(583 cents).[17] The eleventh harmonic (i.e. 11 ⁄8 or 551 cents) as put forward by Kubik[9] and Curry[10] is
also possible as it is in the middle of the slur between the perfect fourth at 4 ⁄3 and 7 ⁄5 .
The blue "lowered seventh" appears to have two common locations at 7 ⁄4 (969 cents) and 9 ⁄5 (1018
cents).[17] Kubik[9] and Curry[10] proposed 7 ⁄4 as it is commonly heard in the barbershop quartet harmonic
seventh chord.[19] The barbershop quartet idiom also appears to have arisen from African American
origins.[20][19] It was a surprising finding that 9 ⁄5 was a much more common tonal location although both
were used in the blues, sometimes within the same song.[17]
It should not be surprising that blue notes are not represented accurately in the 12-tone equal temperament
system, which is made up of a cycle of very slightly flattened perfect fifths (i.e. 3 ⁄2 ). The just intonation blue
note intervals identified above all involve prime numbers not equally divisible by 2 or 3. Prime-number
harmonics greater than 3 are all perceptually different from 12-tone equal temperament notes.
The blues has likely evolved as a fusion of an African just intonation scale with European 12-tone musical
instruments and harmony.[16][7] The result has been a uniquely American music which is still widely
practiced in its original form and is at the foundation of another genre, American jazz.
See also
Altered chord
Harmonic seventh
Major and minor
Twelve-bar blues
References
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om/blues-concepts/blue-notes/). How To Play Blues Guitar. 2008-07-06. Archived from the
original (http://how-to-play-blues-guitar.com/blues-concepts/blue-notes/) on 2008-12-02.
Retrieved 2008-07-06.
2. Evans, David, 1944- (1982). Big road blues : tradition and creativity in the folk blues.
Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03484-8. OCLC 6197930 (https://www.
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5. Lloyd, A. L. (1967). Folk Song in England, pp. 52–54. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Cited in
Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University
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8. Kubik, Gerhard (2005). "The African Matrix in Jazz Harmonic Practices". Black Music
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3605). JSTOR 30039290 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/30039290).
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perspective. In D. Evans (Ed.), Ramblin’ on my mind: New perspectives on the blues (pp.
11–48). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
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chromatic cycle" (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/popular-music/article/blues-music
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F371DBA79A32498BD745). Popular Music. 34 (2): 245–273.
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Approaches to Tonal Space" (http://pure-oai.bham.ac.uk/ws/files/43012584/Curry_two_appr
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16. Oliver, Paul (1970). Savannah syncopators: African retentions in the blues. London: Studio
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17. Cutting, Court B (2019-01-17). "Microtonal Analysis of "Blue Notes" and the Blues Scale" (htt
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tps://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.17.23.1/mto.17.23.1.temperley.html). Music Theory Online. 23.
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0.1093/acprof:oso/9780195116724.001.0001/acprof-9780195116724). Oxford University
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Further reading
Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1968), pp. 46–52). Cited in Benward & Saker (2003), p. 39.