Talk:Blue note

You've Got It All Wrong

With all due respect to the individuals who wrote this article the blues note refers to the flat fifth scale degree of the major scale. If you call that a sharp 11 in court you will get weird faces. The third and seventh are unique to the chord but idiomatic at the same time and have nothing to do with the blues note, although they are a major part of the jazz approach to blues changes.

Please consider strongly reworking this entire article.

Brian Abbott Burnedfaceless (talk) 11:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

With respect, your definition is far too narrow. The main "blue note", in terms of frequency of occurrence in the music of the early African-American masters of the blues, is the blue b3 (just 6/5) often slurred with the just intonation major 3rd (at 5/4). I share your affection for the blue tritone, but it is certainly not the only blue note. 98.185.230.24 (talk) 16:29, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Blues scale

Blues scale currently redirects to Pentatonic scale. I don't think this is really adequate; I think Blues scale should either be a separate article or should be included as part of this article (and redirect to here). I'd be bold, but I just don't know enough to start a stub. --Allen 02:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll try to find a good reference for a study of blues tuning. Most blues is pentatonic in nature, but the tuning is different enough to maybe warrant a separate article. —Keenan Pepper 03:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Blue Note and Writers Block

I am not sure if anyone else has heard of "the blue note" being related to "writers block" for musicians. This was the original reason I looked up the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.17.44.163 (talk • contribs)

Related how? --Allen 22:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Related as in a writer who cant get inspiration to write has writer block a musician who cannot get inspired to compose, or feels he is not playing well gets "the blue note". I was told this a long time ago and have not found anything to back up this expression, hence me leaving the note here to see if any one else has. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.17.44.163 (talk • contribs)

Interesting. No, I haven't heard the expression, I haven't spent enough time in the music world for that to necessarily mean anything. --Allen 17:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

most important notes?

Blue notes are the most important notes in the blues scale? What about the tonic? What an insane subjective statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.143.161.116 (talk • contribs)

Good point, although I think "insane" is a bit extreme. How about changing it to "the characteristic notes in the blues scale" or "the defining notes in the blues scale"? --Allen 17:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Nice job

Nice job, I didn't think anybody actually looked at this Wiki article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.143.161.116 (talk) 12:11, 7 October 2006

Flat 5 vs. sharp 11

I think the statement about bebop emphasizing the flat 5 is inaccurate (just original research from having listened to and played hundreds of blues and bop tunes). Plenty of old non-jazz blues use the flat 5 extensively. Bop did expand the use of the sharp 11 - superficially the same note, but functionally very different. Special-T 11:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Bebop's harmonic use of flatted fifths has nothing to do with blue notes. I've removed the passage in question. TheScotch 19:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hear it, please?

All this wordy stuff is meaningless unless we can hear it. Can we have examples we can hear, please? If Wikipedia has visual media (see it) why can't it have audio media (hear it)? This applies to pretty well any music-related article. Grendlegrutch (talk) 19:03, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

fully support this. B A Thuriaux (talk) 11:54, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Reference #17 (open access) provides an audio supplement of the just intonation blues scale. Can a link to this audio be entered in Wikipedia? 98.185.230.24 (talk) 16:35, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Brown note?

Brown note has nothing to do with jazz, or music for that matter. I was appauled to find out what it was when I clicked on the link at the bottom of the page. Will someone remove it? I don't know how. I hardly consider it a related article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.165.161.238 (talk) 13:19, 15 November 2006

It clearly follows the pattern "(color) note", which is of etymological interest. -- Beland (talk) 00:49, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect Info

"The flattened fifth is also known as the sharpened fourth"

It cites a source in perfect form, but the remark is still nonsense. The flattened fifth and sharpened fourth are enharmonic equivalents in the equal tempered 12-note scale we commonly use. However, because the term blue note deals specifically with intervals different from standard diatonicism, it the sharpened fourth and flattened fifth should be treated as different. To my knowledge, the tritone (sharpened fourth) is not commonly used as blue note, as opposed to the flattened fifth. 82.176.202.53 (talk) 16:22, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

But this is a Wikipedia article, and we need to cite sources, not our personal knowledge. Also, note that "known as" does not equal "treated as". Hyacinth (talk) 21:14, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Then I will look up a good source for it, but this remark needs to be removed, because it is quite simply incorrect and leads to needless confusion - the flattened fifth is not even "known as" the sharpened fourth, it is sometimes erroneously identified as identical to it. 82.176.202.53 (talk) 10:07, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I've removed it - here's why: The ref appears to be a method book. Sometimes these books incorrectly refer to enharmonic equivalents as "the same note" to make it easier for the reader to figure out where to put the fingers to get that note (not used to seeing Gb? We'll just call it F#). The flatted fifth functions differently from the sharp 4 (or the sharp 11, see above). - Special-T (talk) 18:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Does it appear to be a method book or is it a method book? How would you know that this book is incorrect? Why are we removing cited information based on guesses? Hyacinth (talk) 07:09, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue about it. Your points are valid, but I've seen this kind of misinformation or misleading treatment of musical theory/structure in lots of music instruction books - they're not publications about the theory and shouldn't be used as refs in that area. I'd bet this is just another such instance. The statement in question is inaccurate and misleading, and the article is better without it. As I said, your policy points are valid, but including misinformation just because someone got it into print doesn't make a better article. - Special-T (talk) 13:17, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

The argument goes, policy wise, that it should be simple enough to find a printed example of the opposing viewpoint (that #4 does not = b5) and then that the article should discuss both viewpoints. Hyacinth (talk) 22:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

@Hyacinth: please don't make me throw the book at you. We're not going to discuss incorrect claims simply because they appear in print. But if you're going to be pedantic about it, here's a number of actually credible and reliable sources:

P.I. Tchaikovsky, Guide To The Practical Study Of Harmony (Leipsic 1900) pp. 7-8 - discusses the two as separate, different intervals.

Y. van Rossum, Muziek van A tot Z (Hoogeveen 2004) (Dutch) - mentions the augmented fourth as synonymous with the tritonus (p. 533), discusses the diminished fifth as a separate interval (p. 549)

J.P. Burkholder, D.J. Grout, C.V. Palisca, A History of Western Music 7th Ed. (New York 2006) pp. 88-90 - discusses the origins of both the augmented fourth and diminished fifth interval in early organum, and explains how the diminished fifth was permissible whereas the augmented fourth wasn't.

I hope this is enough to convince you that the claim under discussion is ridiculous and does not merit inclusion in the article. 82.176.209.52 (talk) 14:45, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

JS Bach is not a proponent of equal temperament

I suggest that you delete the comment that JS Bach promulgated equal temperament. As outlined on Wiki "well temperament", in Bach*s time "the term "well temperament" usually means some sort of irregular temperament in which the tempered fifths are of different sizes but no key has very impure intervals. Historical irregular temperaments usually have the narrowest fifths between the diatonic notes ("naturals") producing purer thirds, and wider fifths among the chromatic notes ("sharps and flats"). Each key then has a slightly different intonation, hence different keys have distinct characters. Such "key-color" was an essential part of much 18th- and 19th-century music and was described in treatises of the period."

Such, it is currently quite undebated amongst Bach scholars that JS Bach did use an unequal distribution of the harmonic "wolf" factor and favored each key to have its distinct expression and character, which is impossible under an equal distribution. In that sense, the well-tempered clavier is not the first exponent of today's piano tuning practice and should not be quoted like that.

Cheers PG Philip Goeth (talk) 20:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of temperament is irrelevant

I was always under the impression that the blue notes were a remnant of African musical cultures that don't divide the octave in the same way as western European musics. If this is the case then the discussion in this article about equal temperament is off base and irrelevant. The blue note IS NOT an attempt to adjust for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.21.107.132 (talk) 00:30, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Even if we believe equal temperament is the cause, the article's explanation of equal temperament is uncited and incorrect anyway. Equal temperament comes about because of wanting the circle of fifths to close nicely, so that an instrument with fixed-pitch notes can play in all keys. It has little or nothing to do with making octaves consistent with each other, which seems to be a vague description of the stretched-octave issue in pianos (not "keyboard instruments" but pianos in particular). The article's description of equal temperament as the origin of the blue note should probably be removed for that reason as well as the reasons you describe. 188.182.238.181 (talk) 06:42, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Removed that section - it really made no sense. Blue notes could easily be observed working alongside notes at pitches that that would be the same as in just intonation (and doubtless are, in performances of vocal pieces that aren't accompanied by tempered instruments.)Happypoems (talk) 21:51, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Citation for song references

"A similar conflict occurs between the notes of the minor scale and the minor blues scale, as heard in songs such as "Why Don't You Do Right?", "Happy" and "Sweet About Me"." Does this need to be sourced? I'd love to read an article and listen to an example. --Andybader (talk) 17:49, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

re:equal temperament

In response to the persistent reversions of User:165.234.252.11 I just wanted to explain and defend the edits of the original explanation of the blue note vis-à-vis equal temperament. The Blue Note (ie flattened thirds and fifths) is intrinsically related to the twelve tone western scale in as far as its very definition depends on that conceptual framework. What we today in the West call 'music' is actually no more than four hundred years old because the whole system of diatonic harmony that constitutes the common practice period is based on twelve tone equal temperament. The whole diatonic system of circle of fourths and fifths (on which western harmony is currently based) is of very recent historical provenance. Before equal temperament became ubiquitous in the West during the Baroque Period musical instruments were created according to intervals as they existed within the natural harmonic series. This series of intervals is today often called harmonics or overtones. The important thing to understand in this regard is that in their natural form harmonic intervals are not 'equal'. In other words they are not based on equal mathematical ratios. 'Primitive' (ie non-western) instruments have the unusual distinction in that as you go up the octaves the pitches of the intervals that are following a natural pattern turn out to be different and thus not a workable solution to creating a system of music that is coherent, standardized and mathematically consistent. This whole controversy during the Baroque Period was resolved in an innovation that became known as twelve tone equal temperament and which subsequently gave birth to the 'common practice period' in which we are still living today.

African-American Blues traditions (whose harmonic structure and inflections influenced the more diatonic-structured Jazz tradition) are based on non-equal temperament traditions (West African music to be precise). All music prior to the artificial system of equal temperament was based on natural harmonics and overtones whether in Europe, China or Africa. Blue Notes adjust the mathematically artificial interval to one that is closer to the more 'organic' natural interval. kind regards 82.27.90.157 (talk) 00:04, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for taking this to the talk page (and sorry for taking so long to respond, I only edit intermittently). I am following your train of thought here, I think, but could you please just find a book that says as much and then cite it? It's what's expected of just about any statement here, and this particular statement has been contested by others. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 18:21, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I removed this material. It is disputed and unsourced, and a source was requested explicitly over a year ago in the comment above. The removed material is below. --Allen (talk) 17:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

The existence of the blue note within music derives, in part, from the fact that equal temperament in western diatonic harmony is an artifice or compromise originally employed in the eighteenth century to address problems posed in the creation of keyboard instruments. Equal temperament was an artificial 'straightening out' of a tendency for the natural harmonic series (musical intervals as they exist in nature) to go off at a tangent, meaning that higher intervals and octaves in their natural form are of a different pitch than the lower intervals and octaves. This made it difficult to create keyboard instruments that were 'coherent'. Hence, the blue note attempts to correct this artifice by playing a note that is closer to the interval as it exists in the natural harmonic series. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the diatonic pitches with emotive blue notes.

An anonymous user restored the above with no explanation and no sources. I have requested an explanation on their talk page. --Allen (talk) 21:10, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

User:82.27.90.157, who restored the material, agreed to the removal on my talk page. Re-removing. --Amcbride (talk) 22:59, 9 February 2020 (UTC)