From: "John F. Potts" <hvyj@xxxxxxx> Date: September 5, 2008 9:32:11 AM GMT-04:00 To: turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Question re: blue notes and micro-tonality
Mr. Hunter,
i certainly appreciate what you (and others) are saying about spontaneity of expression as applied to bending blue notes, but I'm sure none of you would suggest that practicing scales is not good because it inhibits spontaneity of expression. To the contrary, technical proficiency playing scales enhances spontaneity because it allows the player to more readily express himself on the spur of the moment while improvising during performance..
With respect to blue notes, as I understand it, blues was created by West Africans who were transported to America as slaves as they adapted their traditional West African tonalities to European melodies. W.C. Handy was the first to try to notate this "blues scale" and approximated some of the tones because Western notation does not have a convention for notating quarter tones. BUT, Little Walter consistently plays the third a quarter tone flat and consistently plays that same note a full half step flat when it is played as a 7th. Sugar Blue does the same thing. This is also done by other "authentic" blues players, so it appears to me to be a part of the idiom rather than random spontaneity of expression. Adam Gussow talks a lot about the blue third and I've seen other references that claim it is a distinction of an authentic blues player to play the blue third a quarter tone flat but play that same note a half step flat on the IV chord when it is played as a 7th. I'm not making this stuff up, nor have I been obsessing over it--a player certainly won't be struck by lightning or booed if he doesn't follow these conventions. But the convention apparently does exist as part of the blues idiom.
The manner in which "authentic" blues musicians played the "blue third" is interesting (at least to me), and i am curious about whether there is any similar idiomatic tradition about the historical tonality of the other blue notes, the flat 5th and flat 7th. Satisfying this curiousity is not going to stultify my playing or divest me of spontaneity or inhibit emotional creativity in my performance. The blue third is an enthnomusical historical reality. I just want to know if there are similar historical idioms which applied to tonality of the other blue notes. The question is more of an historical (rather than a technical) nature. I'm no ethnomusicoligist, and I was hoping some others on the list would know more about this than I do.
JP