Re: [Harp-L] Should the blues scale be revised?

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

No-one should be saying that when you play the blues scale you should shun all other notes. (My prescription: don't prescribe!)

The so-called blues scale is a distillation of the so-called "blue" notes - b3, 5b, b7, with the addition of 1, 4, and 5 to make them into a freestanding scale.

You do hear jazz musicians play the blues scale as a *scale* but it's really a construct designed to isolate those 'special" notes that deviate from the major scale. The blue notes occur organically in many musical contexts without reference to any special scale (and not always in reference to the blues or even anything derived from the blues).

The blues scale is really the minor pentatonic (five-note) scale with the b5 added:

1 b3 4 5 b7

And the minor pentatonic is the same as the major pentatonic, just centering around a different note.

Now, at this point I'm going to start talking about an actual key to make it *slightly* less confusing. That key will be C.

C major pentatonic scale: C D E G A

A minor pentatonic scale: A C D E G

Same scale just started on a different note, yes?

So let's take the A blues scale and start it on C:

C D Eb E G A

Noe you've got the b3, one of the blue notes.

Let's say we combine that scale with a C blues scale of C Eb F Gb G Bb. We get:

C D Eb E F Gb G A Bb

If you played this scale in second position on an F harp, you'd get the same scale as already exists on the harp, with bent notes needed for Eb (draw 3) and Gb (draw 1 and 4). A decent fit.

If you do this same scale combining exercise for the IV and V chords (in this case, F, incorporating F and D blues scales; and G iincoroprating G and E blues scales), you end up with a complete chromatic scale - nothing is excluded!



Zvi Aranoff <zviaranoff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: The Blues Scale is typically described thusly, in degrees from the  
tonic: 1, 3b, 4, 5b, 5, 7b.

What about the natural 3rd? Why isn't it part of the scale? It seems  
that there are good reasons to include it in the scale.

1) The natural 3rd is commonly used in blues. For instance, a Boogie  
does not have a flatted 3rd but a natural 3rd, and yet is considered  
blues. In fact, in early blues the flatted 3rd was hardly used. The  
natural 3rd was far more common.

2) The natural third is part of the chord triad. How could it/why  
would it be eliminated when playing 12 bar blues?

3) The flatted 3rd anyway tends to resolve to the natural 3rd, which  
means that often when the flatted 3rd is played we'll also find a  
natural 3rd.

Since a scale is defined as �a group of musical notes that provides  
material for part or all of a musical work� (Wikipedia), would it not  
make sense to include the natural 3rd in the scale, since it's part  
and parcel of Blues?

If the natural 3rd is included, would we need to drop a note to keep  
it hexatonic? (e.g., the natural 4th?)

-Z



_______________________________________________
Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l


       
---------------------------------
Never miss a thing.   Make Yahoo your homepage.