What are "Blue Notes?"🎶 (feat. Samurai Guitarist) 

Yeah that's really useful. I knew there were other blue notes than the b5 and was trying to think of what they were. I've heard the mixed major/minor thirds could have come simply from players learning the minor pentatonic with its easy shape for soloing, and just playing it over major progressions, why not? Those 3/4-sharp microtones are really interesting because they're actually not out of key in a certain sense, they exist in E major tuned in just intonation (in other words, they come from pure, simple ratios based on overtones, ie multiples of the root frequency). (But mixing tuning systems is for sure "out of key" in a practical sense.) Bending a minor third "about" 3/4 sharp is approaching the just major third at 386 cents-it's closer to it than the equal temperament major third is (which is 400 cents, or 4 semitones). The just major third is the 5th overtone of the root (the root frequency times 5), but octave-reduced to bring it back to the same octave as the root (in this case, divided by 2 twice). In other words it's the simple frequency ratio of 5:4. Bending the flat seventh about 3/4 sharp is almost a just major seventh (15:8). The 15th overtone is a bit farther out there but I think it is still the first overtone to come anywhere near the major seventh so it's probably arguable that's why it would "just sound right". I actually thought at first you meant the 6th (or bb7) bent to 3/4 sharp, which is almost exactly the "harmonic seventh" of 969 cents (and the 7th overtone). AKA the barbershop seventh since the human voice can produce it easily and in purely vocal music, it's natural to land on the pure ratios, they just feel right. I thought I'd heard that was a common blue note but I could be wrong, do you ever see that one (so C# bent almost to D, in E major)? I think I read that the old field hollers, being purely vocal, probably had harmonic sevenths. One of the things about 12-tone equal temperament is that the thirds, and even more the sevenths, end up actually kind of dissonant. I think it's really interesting how, rather than causing them to be used less, we actually see them being treated as by far the most important tone colours in the scale. The slight dissonance makes them pop out in any chord they're in. If you can find some audio of a justly-tuned major or minor triad or seventh chord compared to equal temperament, you might notice they sound a bit... boring. Turns out we really like a "controlled" dissonance, pure isn't necessarily better, it's just less complex. It's all about how you use it, it becomes another tool to create tension that can then be resolved. Which brings us back around to what the blues players were doing, mixing just and equal tuning systems, playing in minor over a major progression, hitting "vocal" notes on the guitar, all new tools for tension that they discovered and played with. Your long comment made me make a longer one, oops. I also hope someone finds it as interesting as I do.

Improvising, we always draw on what music we know. 'Cause the very first thing we learn is: Purely random notes don't work. So let's learn a new piece, once in a while. Beefs up that Wonder Wall jam!

What's the additional note?

@@BacatauMania I'll do you one better. Find the Blues Scale on this list of exotic scales: Kamavardhani Scale Phrygian Dominant Scale E, F, G#, A#, B, C, D# E, F, G#, A, B, C, D Hungarian Minor Scale Persian Scale E, F#, G, A#, B, C, D# E, F, G#, A, A#, C, D# D Aeolian Scale Egyptian Scale D, E, F, G, A, A#, C E, F#, A, B, D Byzantine(or Gypsy) Scale Arabic Scale E, F, G#, A, B, C, D# E, F#, G#, A, A#, C, D Hirajoshi Scale Dorian #4 Scale E, F#, G, B, C E, F#, G, A#, B, C#, D Iwato Scale Negative Harmony Scale E, F, A, A#, D C, D, Eb, E, F, G, Ab, A, Bb, B Kumoi Scale Blues Scale E, F#, G, B, C# E, G, A, A#, B, D Hindu Scale C Raga Asavari Scale E, F#, G#, A, B, C, D C, C#, D#, F, G, G#, A# Diatonic Natural Scale E Major Diatonic: E, F#, G, A, B, C, D E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D# Locrian Scale Mixolydian-Blues Scale E, F, G, A, A#, C, D, E, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C#, D Romanian Minor Scale E, F#, G, A#, B, C#, D

@@ricktheexplorer i don't even play any instrument. I'm completely lost here. But anyway, thanks for trying to help.

@@BacatauMania In a E blues scale, the 6th note he would be talking about would be an A sharp.

@@ricktheexplorer thanks for explaining, I'll remember that for when I learn the guitar

I saw that on RU-vid, right!

It's only in the last couple of centuries (if even that) that folk-music or street-music has been thought of as a separate discipline from orchestra or court-music, though. It's true that when you go to a music-school to learn classical music, you're being told that there is a "correct" way to play a piece. And that you should remove all the intellectually offensive elements that aren't "pure", that we then associate with the common folk and their pop-music and so on. But in reality, even music that was specifically composed to be performed in a court, for nobility (Vivaldi, Bach), draws extremely obviously from street-music. If you know how to listen for it, you can find any amount of tavern-ditties in Bach's pieces. And Vivaldi is essentially a cavalcade of courtified street-music. When Kapsberger wrote La Vilanella (it means "the townie", the folksy thing), it features the kind of tunes and harmonies that you would have found in a street-band as well. It doesn't /sound/ like folksy music to us, because it doesn't stink of polka and one-note chords or something like that. But the court-music for patrons was so close to the folk-music that the Chittarone, the stately and proud many-stringed instrument used in the precursor for Opera - is literally the same instrument as the Theorbo, the harsh and unsophisticated instrument played by the Turks in the street. So although there are differences between folk-music and classical music, like there's differences between blues and metal, or metal and classical music - it's genuinely only our "early 1900s romantical era" edition of classical music that is so artificially removed in many different ways from folk-music that we see it now as utterly unrelated. And that you then have to have cheated and played rock&roll or metal for it to not be impossible to grasp blues, and so on. But really, if you read the actual source tabs and/or sheet music of - for example Kapsberger, or Brescianello, from before Bach - you will find elements in that that just flatly contradict what you're going to be presented with as the "baroque style" in a teaching book. With dissonance, with use of intervals, ornamentation on wrong notes, dominating notes that shear off from the key like it's nothing, switching time-signatures, suggestions for note-values that don't add up to the full bar if you don't understand they wanted a suspended trill or a several staged ornament. It's got everything in there, and explicitly invoke folk-dances -- not because it's a dance-tune you're playing -- but because it's supposed to be performed in the style and beat of that folk-dance. Later, a menuet and a scherzo becomes formalized in litterature, to the point where (famously Bach's son and contemporaries) keep specifying appogiatura to be a mathematical fraction of the associated note, and things like that. And this becomes drawn into generalisations about "classical music" in books later, where people then have very obviously drawn statements about various things out of not just the time it was written in, but also the context in the comment itself. And then plastered on to a fully fictional genre of "classical music" that then suddenly span 500 years, to formalize that as a specific discipline. But it's genuinely just a lie. Classical music is different from folk-music for sure. Most "classical" classical recordings also have a particular style, that's undeniable. But classical music and folk music is really, if you go to the sources, as different as two brothers who grew up together, not two different species of organism from different parts of the ecosystem (i.e., that they have "notes" in common, or something like that).

That isn't blues.

@@xaviergough9359 what is it? Last I checked texas flood was a blues song lol