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

[robert mcgraw <harpbob@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi David-
  Enjoyed your post but repectfully would say that the blues scale is a learning device, training wheels if you will...it's simply a sort of "lick" you learn, like the Little Walter licks you learn...helps get the sound of the blues in your head so your head will have the language to describe what your heart feels...that's my 40 cents worth, anyway :-)
WVa Bob> Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 10:37:15 -0800> From: drfertig@xxxxxxxxx> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [Harp-L] Should the blues scale be revised?> > Blues scale? What is that, like 40 cents an hour? > > OK, this hits home for me. Caution: verbose heresy below:> > There is no blues scale.> > I think "blues" music arose at least partially from a gumbo of microtonal and polyrhythmic musical cultures brought together largely by the evil transatlantic slave-trade, which african musical olio was then extruded through american church organ pipes and mixed with musical notions and instruments from celtic, latin, caribbean and south american cultures, etc., etc.> > I would argue the so-called blues scale is a construct of contemporary western musical classification (thanks in part to WC Handy?) which approximates classic/popular blues structures, so they could be shared, copied and marketed. > > But if you listen to people such as Leadbelly, Son House, Liba Cotton, Josh White, John Lee Hooker, you'll hear they didn't have much of an orthodoxy as to structure, scales, bar-counts, they just played the blues from their guts, with at times very loose structures, anyway they made music that expressed their own hearts without too much regard for A440/12-bar/1-4-5 flatted-seventh blah blah blah. > > Frankly, while many people make wonderful music with elements of blues in them, to me it just ain't blues if it's chiefly a construct of the intellect. > > As early as I can remember (some great blues artists often visited my family's home in my early youth, and since) I first felt the blues as a soulful cry of human emotions, the whole pallet, as though fully formed from the soul and guts of the person making the sound. > > As an infant, literally, and since, I've looked into the faces of people playing their honest personal blues and felt the deep, ancient, private, tragic, beautiful, loving, terrible, yawning abyss of personal pain and hope and endless beauty and life and death and more hope and in the end, lots of humor and pathos though an unvarnished, pure and unfiltered mode of immediate and honest musical expression. > > So I never learned the d@mned "blues scale" until I started playing with musicians who went by it, and frankly, I still don't buy it, it's like saying one can paint Monet by numbers and create something. > > Oh, sure, I do play traditional blues progressions, it makes it easier to jam with others who aren't as adventurous or crazy, but I am reminded of bassist Ron Perry (John Lee Hooker's bassist for like 18 years) comment that John would play progressions of 3 bars, then 8, 11, 5, 17, whatever, or he'd go off on some bent melodic tangent, and the band would just chase him around and keep it together, creating a unique piece of beautiful and real blues in the moment. > > Now, paint-by-numbers is pretty cool if you want to make something that looks like someone else's soul, and blues scales are guides that enable people to sound like they're playin' blues, but what about people playing what is in their own heart?> > Not to suggest people who play blues "by the numbers" are - or sound - particularly less beautiful for it, just less immediate and heartfelt. If they're worryin' about hitting "right" notes or rhythms, it can operate as a filter of their soul. > > And for a whopping 40 cents an hour, I want the real, unfiltered thing!> > -Dave Fertig> > > From: Zvi Aranoff <zviaranoff@xxxxxxxxx>> Subject: [Harp-L] Should the blues scale be revised?> Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:29:56 -0500> To: Harp <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>> > 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> > > > > From: "Jim Alciere" <jim.alciere@xxxxxxxxx>> Subject: [Harp-L] re: blues scale> CC: > Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:59:22 -0500> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx> > Some folks play the 3rd natural, some play it flat. When you walk the bass> you are playing the 3rd natural and the band plays the 3rd flat. And let's> not forget the 1 can and often is flatted as well (otherwise how would you> play Jailhouse Rock?). Then there's the cool augmented 9th chords the> Hammond B3 players love that has the 3rd and the flatted third in the same> chord. And of course some purists might argue that the blues notes are> actually part of a Mali musical tradition that dates back thousands of years> and the notes aren't actually a half step flat, closer to a quarter step> flat.> > So if you want to play the 3rd natural try it, see how sounds.> > -- > Rainbow Jimmy> http://www.spaceanimals.com> http://www.myspace.com/theelectricstarlightspaceanimals> > _______________________________________________> Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org> Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx> http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l
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