I got interested in tuning theory because of the blues. The first instrument I learned to play well was the harmonica, and an essential part of blues harmonica is bending notes to make them go flat. The same is true for blues guitar, though there you are bending notes sharp rather than flat. For several years, I bent notes because it sounded good and didn’t think too much about why. But the more I learned about Western music theory, the more mysterious the blues became. It’s hard enough to understand how a minor third could sound so right on top of a major chord; but then why should it sound even better to deliberately play an out-of-tune minor third? It’s not like every out-of-tune note sounds good in blues-based music. The Grateful Dead combine a lot of objectionably sour vocal harmony with Jerry’s deliciously sweet bent notes on guitar. What’s the difference, aside from intention?
I don’t have a definite explanation of the blues’ flexible use of certain pitches, and I certainly don’t know the best way to teach this idea. My approach is to present students with specific blue notes from well-known songs and see what we can figure out. James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good)” from 1965 is an especially clear example.
The main part of the song, which one might call the chorus, is a straightforward twelve-bar blues in D. At the end of each chorus, the horns play an arpeggiated D9 chord on weak offbeat subdivisions. After the second chorus, Maceo Parker plays an alto saxophone break. (Listen at 0:42.) Maceo is arpeggiating a Dm7 chord: D, F, A and C. This is an unsurprising thing to play over blues in D. But listen closely to the F at the end of the riff: Maceo is bending it extremely flat.
The bent note is easy to see in Melodyne; it’s the long blob on the lower right. It’s so flat that it’s halfway to being an E. (The whole track is tuned about fifteen cents flat; I adjusted for that before opening the sax break in Melodyne. Also, the striped blobs are drum hits.)
If you’re a sax player, here’s a good tutorial on how to bend your notes.
Maceo plays the riff three more times in the song, and every time, he bends the concluding F extremely flat. It isn’t precisely the same pitch every time he plays it, but it’s too close to be accidental or random. So what is going on here? It would have sounded okay if Maceo had played a regular F. It would have sounded less bluesy if he played E, but it would still be musical. So why play a pitch halfway between those two notes?
Before I try to answer that, here’s another, deeper question. Did Maceo’s bent F’s even register as “out of tune” to you before you read this post? I listened to “I Got You (I Feel Good)” uncountably many times before it occurred to me that there might be something unusual about those notes. When I started thinking about blue notes seriously, I had trouble finding examples of them. This is not because they are rare, but because they are so common. Bending your thirds, fifths and sevenths is such a ubiquitous feature of blues-derived music that I didn’t even notice it in most of the music I like. It’s a testament to how much of our listening experience is colored by expectations. Now that I’m alert to the existence of microtonal pitches in the blues, I find them all over the place, but when I didn’t know they were there, they just didn’t set off any mental alerts.
Anyway. Back to Maceo Parker’s bent F. Some people resist even asking for an explanation. The thinking goes that blues is an outpouring of emotion, not a technical calculation, and Maceo bent that note because he just felt it. Some blues musicians speak about their own playing this way. In this video, BB King says he plays a bent third because “that’s what I hear.”
But why is this what BB King hears? Why does Maceo hear it too? There are a lot of ways to give a note emotional emphasis; what does the pitch bend do that other kinds of expressive playing don’t?
So far, the most persuasive explanation I have seen comes from Gerhard Kubik, who thinks that blue notes originate in traditional West and Central African tuning systems based on the natural harmonics of notes tuned a fourth apart. For blues in D, imagine that you are tuning to the harmonics of the guitar’s D and G strings.
- The D string’s first seven harmonics produce the pitches D, D, A, D, mildly flat F-sharp, A, and very flat C.
- The G string’s first seven harmonics produce the pitches G, G, D, G, mildly flat B, D, and very flat F.
According to Kubik’s theory, Maceo is aiming for that very flat F from the G string’s seventh harmonic, an interval above D called a subminor third. If the D and G are tuned to 1 Hz and 4/3 Hz respectively, then the subminor third has a frequency of 7/6 Hz. (For actual frequencies, multiply all of these numbers by 293.66.) This is just a wee bit sharper than the exact halfway point between equal-tempered E and F. So is Maceo aiming for a seven-limit just intonation interval, or is it a coincidence? If it’s a coincidence, why else would he be bending his F that far flat, and doing it so consistently?
While we contemplate that question, here’s a fun bit of lore: the drummer on “I Got You (I Feel Good)”, and the only person accompanying Maceo’s breaks, is Melvin Parker, Maceo’s brother.
James Brown released many versions of “I Got You (I Feel Good) over his career. I want to draw your attention to the one from 1975’s Sex Machine Today. Critics savaged this recording, but I like it. The rhythm is more complex and funky, and horn chart is super hip. Unfortunately, I can’t find the album credits anywhere, so I don’t know who the musicians are. There are a couple of great bent notes in the horn section in this version; listen at 0:56 and 1:02.
The Reflex Re-Vision of this recording is even better. It punches up the dynamics, loops the best parts, and extends the track to a more satisfying length.
Back to Maceo Parker’s subminor third (if that’s what it is.) Most blue thirds are somewhere in between the equal tempered major and minor thirds. The only other subminor thirds I can think off of the top of my head in a famous recording are in “Texas Hold ‘Em” by Beyoncé and “Tennessee Jed” by the Grateful Dead. But it’s a note that I use a lot in my own blues playing, and I used it before I had any idea about Gerhard Kubik or seven-limit just intonation. Will a better explanation for these bends come along? Did Kubik get it right? Can any blues musicians confirm or deny? I hope to find out.