Music/Scale/Blues

• Blues Scale

  • Also called the minor blues or hexatonic blues scale. On C, in its standard textbook form: C E♭ F G♭ G B♭. Steps in semitones: 3 2 1 1 3 2. Music/Scale/Pentatonic/Minor with an added ♭5.

  • History

    • The blues came out of African American vocal music in the Deep South around 1900. Its "blue notes" are inflected regions around the third, fifth and seventh that a singer or guitarist bends into, and they fall between equal-tempered pitches.
    • Person/W. C. Handy's published blues, among them "The Memphis Blues" (1912) and "St. Louis Blues" (1914), had to fit those inflections onto a piano. Notation and keyboards turned the blue notes into fixed lowered pitches.
    • The six-note blues scale is a later pedagogical summary of that practice, popularized by mid-twentieth-century jazz method books.

  • Use

    • Blues harmony is a sequence of dominant seventh chords (I7, IV7, V7). The melody's ♭3 against the chord's major third is the idiom's central dissonance, and players often slide from ♭3 to 3.
    • Rock guitar improvisation is built largely on minor pentatonic and blues-scale patterns.
    • A "major blues" scale adds ♭3 to Music/Scale/Pentatonic/Major: C D E♭ E G A on C.

  • Quirks

    • The chromatic run F G♭ G gives players a fixed-pitch stand-in for a bend through the blue fifth.
    • The MicroFreak manual lists its "Blues" setting as nine notes: C D E♭ F G♭ G A♭ A B♭. That collection is the hexatonic blues scale plus 2, ♭6 and 6, larger than any standard blues scale. The same manual's introduction to scales says blues scales use six notes. See Microfreak/UG/15 Using Scales/01 Scale Settings and Microfreak/UG/15 Using Scales.
    • The Launchpad manual names a "Blues" setting without listing its pitches.