Blue note
This article is about the blue note musical device. For the record label, see Blue Note Records.In
jazz and
blues,
blue notes are
notes sung or played at a lower
pitch than those of the
major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is less than a
semitone, but this varies among performers.
The blue notes correspond approximately to the
flatted third,
flatted fifth, and
flatted seventh scale degrees, although they approximate non-
equal tempered pitches found in
African work songs; specifically, the flatted seventh may often be a
justly tuned minor seventh. Blue notes are the most important notes in the
blues scale.
In its earliest manifestations, the flatted third, or
mediant, and flatted seventh, or
subtonic, were the main blue notes. Emphasis on the flatted fifth, or
dominant, was an innovation in
bebop in the
1940s.
Blue notes are also prevalent in
English folk music (Lloyd 1967, p.52-4).
*
Blue Note Records*Middleton, Richard (1990/2002).
Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
**Lloyd (1967).
