Blue note
In jazz and blues, a blue note (also "worried" note[1]) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitoneor less, but this varies among performers and genres.
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[edit]Origins and meaning
The existence of the blue note within African-American music ultimately derives from the fact that the equal temperament utilised in western diatonic harmony is an artifice or compromise originally employed in the eighteenth century to address the problems posed in the creation of keyboard instruments. Equal temperament was an artificial 'straightening out' of a tendency for thenatural 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 which were 'coherent'. Hence the blue note is an attempt 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. Blue notes are often seen as akin to relative pitches found in traditional African work songs.
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 flatter 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 flattening 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 [sic].
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), [2]
The blue notes are usually said to be the flattened third, flattened fifth, and flattened seventh scale degrees.[3] The flatted fifth is also known as the sharpened fourth.[4] Though the blues scale has "an inherent minor tonality, it is commonly 'forced' over major-key chord changes, resulting in a distinctively dissonant conflict of tonalities".[4] A similar conflict occurs between the notes of theminor scale and the minor blues scale, as heard in songs such as "Why Don't You Do Right?."
In the case of the flattened third over the root (or the flattened 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]
Блюзовий лад
Блюзовий лад — особливий різновид мажоро-мінору, характерний для блюзу та споріднених жанрів. Полягає у використанні т.зв. «блюзових нот» — понижених III, V та VII ступенівмажорного ладу. Пониження сягає півтону або менше і варіюється у різних виконавців. Рідше зустрічається «блюзовий мінор» — натуральний мінор з пониженням V ступеня,
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Blue Note Records
| Blue Note Records | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Parent company | Universal Music Group |
| Founded | 1939 1985 (relaunch) |
| Founder | Alfred Lion Francis Wolff Max Margulis |
| Distributor(s) | Blue Note Label Group |
| Genre | Jazz |
| Country of origin | US |
| Official Website | www.bluenote.com |
Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues.
Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, from 1947 the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz. While the original company did not itself record many of the pioneers of bebop, significant exceptions are Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro and Bud Powell.
Historically, Blue Note has principally been associated with the "hard bop" style of jazz (mixing bebop with other forms of music including soul, blues,rhythm and blues and gospel). Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd and Grant Greenwere among the label's leading artists.
The label is currently owned by the Universal Music Group and in 2006 was expanded to fill the role of an umbrella label group bringing together a wide variety of then EMI-owned labels and imprints specializing in the growing market segment of music for adults.
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