If you want to play any kind of American vernacular
music - blues, jazz, rock, country, gospel, folk, etc - then
you're going to need to be able to use blue notes. There are
many different confusing and contradictary notions of what a
blue note is. I define a blue note as a microtonal pitch in
between a blues scale note and a neighboring major scale note.
First of all, here's a comparison of the C major
scale and the C blues scale. Notes in red notes are 'non-diatonic',
meaning not native to C major.
| C |
-- |
D |
Eb |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
-- |
A |
Bb |
B |
| 1 |
-- |
2 |
b3 |
3 |
4 |
#4 |
5 |
-- |
6 |
b7 |
7 |
As you can see, there are three notes in the blues
scale not found in the major scale: the flat third, the sharp
fourth (or flat fifth), and the flat seventh. (They're the red
ones above.) The flat third and seventh give the blues scale
its tragic feeling, and the very dissonant sharp fourth makes
it unsettling and dark. Some people refer to these notes as
blue notes, but I don't think that's correct. Blue notes are
microtonal
pitches in between the three characteristic blues scale
notes and the nearest major scale pitches. They fall between
the piano keys.
| C |
-- |
D |
blue
note |
Eb |
blue
note |
E |
F |
blue
note |
F# |
blue
note |
G |
-- |
A |
blue
note |
Bb |
blue
note |
B |
| 1 |
-- |
2 |
b3 |
3 |
4 |
#4 |
5 |
-- |
6 |
b7 |
7 |
The precise pitch of a blue note is up to the individual musician,
and it can be different every time, according to the musician's
emotion at that moment. Hitting a blue note is almost always
an intuitive and unconscious act. All good blues, jazz, country
and rock singers use blue notes routinely. They're also bread
and butter for guitarists, especially slide guitarists. Other
instruments that use microtones in American music: bass, banjo,
harmonica, the various brass (especially trombone), reeds, strings,
and synthesizers with pitch bend wheels. It's impossible to
play blue notes on the piano, so pianists approximate them by
playing adjacent keys, for example F and F sharp.
The microtones between other standard pitches show up very
occasionally as well. Harmonica players sometimes use a slightly
flattened C, D or A in the key of C, and guitarists will bend
any note so that it's slightly sharp when playing very emotionally
and emphatically. Microtones are part of many other world cultures,
from Indian sitar players to klezmer clarinetists. What's the
difference between a microtone and a note that's just plain
out of tune? Let your ear decide.
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