All quotes are from my fellow Jo(h)n Potts:
"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.."
For myself, I would agree that in general any theoretical knowledge
allows for greater ability to use those in performance. But, the
lack of such technical knowledge doesn't necessarily limit someone's
ability to improvise well or creatively--it depends on the talents
of the individual in question and the musical genre as well.
"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. "
Western notation has a lot of limitations for things outside of
Western theory, which is to be expected. Neither tonalities nor
concepts outside of the Western set are not easily notated.
"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. "
Have you measured this, and if so with what? Have you checked many
examples from many periods throughout their carreers? Assuming so,
is this particular stylistic trait shared by other blues harmonica
players? If so, is it confined to the Delta/Chicago tradition or
can it also be found in the works of people like Sonny Terry and
those outside of that tradition? If not, what do other harmonica
players do?
I am not an ethnomusicologist either, but these are the first
questions which sprung to my mind reading your sentence.
"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."
Define "authentic". And then the same question about time periods
and the like comes up. Actually, the first question I asked was
probably the most important. It begs the question of what is a
"quarter tone"? Is the same deviation from the expected scale used
in all these instances, or is it a range of deviation (however small
that range). Are they attempting to hit the exact same note each
time, or to place the note in a larger pitch set (this of course is
unanswerable, as Walter for one is long dead, but such a theory
could be derived from listening).
"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."
It is very interesting, and frankly I'd be surprised if someone
hadn't studied and published on the subject. It may not be in a
mainstream book, but I'd bet you could find something if you
searched scholarly journals in the fields of ethnomusicology, folk
music and even jazz.
" The blue third is an enthnomusical historical reality. "
Yes, but that doesn't make it necessarily a single note, or even one
of a single usage. I mentioned earlier that Western notation
doesn't deal well with non-Western concepts, and it may be that
things like the blue third or fifth is one of those concepts. It
seems that you are fixated on the idea of it as a single note,
whereas others here have suggested that it may not be a note, but
rather a pitch range. Within that range there may be (and probably
are) more commonly occurring usages (such as the degree of flatness
of the third in relation to the chord, or a tendency to resolve
upwards rather than downwards, etc...), but I would suggest that
fixating on the idea of a specific pitch for these may blind you
towards understanding the broader concept of the blue notes both in
their usage and how they were understood culturally.
To me, understanding music theory is about understanding both the
practical usage of the specific theory and the concepts behind that
usage. Interesting, most of the ethnomusicology works I've read
tends to stress these things more or less equally: the actual
playing of music and how it is understood in the given culture.
()() JR "Bulldogge" Ross
() ()
`----'
_______________________________________________
Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l