Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: blues scale

[Paul Hahn]
>>> Jazz theory texts don't always agree on what the "blues scale"
>>> is, but one that has struck me is C-Eb-E-F#-G-A-Bb-C, partly
>>> because it's so different from the diatonic set, and partly
>>> because it's so similar to (yet not quite the same as) the
>>> octatonic scale.

[David Beardsley]
>> The blues scale is
>>
>> A - C - D - E - G - A
>

[Kraig Grady]
> It seems as though the blues scale is a one of the most variable
> pitch scales we have an example of! As opposed to having fixed
> pitches. Regardless David's scale is the inversion of the
> pentatonic I prefer as a pentatonic. I tend to think of Paul's
> as the blues scale with the understanding that eb-e is a
> variation of a singular pitch with the same around f-f# and Bb
> also. The conditions that determine the use of one end of the
> variation to the other are probably complex beyond a simple
> explanation!

[Beardsley]
> You're absolutely right....but....
>
> A - C - D - E - G - A would be a text book example of
> a blues scale.

I think to compare it effectively with Paul's original scale,
it should be transposed up a 'minor 3rd':

C - Eb - F - G - Bb - C

It's true that the guitarist's blues scale is basically just
a pentatonic, because guitarists (and vocalists) can bend
the notes to other pitches when desired.

This is why I find Kraig's comment that 'eb-e is a variation of a
singular pitch with the same around f-f# and Bb also' interesting.

The standard blues scale for keyboard players is a heptatonic
scale, and in this key, is:

C - Eb - F - F# - G - Bb - B - C

because on a piano, with no pitch-bend available, a blues
pianist simply uses both notes! (F/F# for F, and Bb/B for B)

Paul's scale is quite similar to this, the major differences
being that it contains the 'major 3rd' but not the 'leading tone'.

I should emphasize, also, that the 'leading tone' in this
keyboard scale *is* used regularly in descending riffs:
C - B - Bb - G.

My Robert Johnson analysis may shed some light on blues scales
used by vocalists (that tune is in the key of 'D'):
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/rjohnson/drunken.htm
(with newly-edited music example - more legible than before)

Keep in mind, however, that Johnson was purposely exaggerating
some of the bending in this song, to mimic the drunkenness alluded
to in the title. A good example is the flatness of the '5th'
(662 cents) on the word 'drunken' in the very opening.

Here is a scale listed in order of Semitones, constructed out
of the pitches Johnson sang in the first verse of 'Drunken Hearted
Man'. They were scrupulously figured out by ear, so there's
perhaps a 10-cent margin of error (perhaps less):

12.22 \
11.78 D
11.73 /
11.37 \
10.72 C#
10.61 /
10.49 \
10.18 |
9.96 C
9.69 /
9.33 \
9.13 |
9.06 |
8.98 B
8.84 |
8.72 /
8.41 \Bb
7.73 /A#
7.19 \
7.02 |
6.80 A
6.62 /
6.49 \
6.28 Ab
6.17 G#
5.90 |
5.51 /
4.98 G
4.27 \
3.86 /F#
0.00 D
(10.35 C)

The low C in parenthesis occurs once, below the 'tonic' of D.

Idealizing the pitches into their letter-name 'gestalts',
we do have a weird sort of nonatonic scale:

D - F# - G - G#/Ab - A - A#/Bb - B - C - C# - D

but of course to analyze it this way ignores the masterful
microtonal subtlety employed by Johnson.

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
--------------------------------------------------

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[Dave Keenan, TD 172.16]
> Joe Monzo wrote:
>
>> Richard P. Daniels, 1979
>> _The Heavy Guitar Bible: a Rock Guitar Manual_
>> Cherry Lane Music, Port Chester.
>>
>> In it, Daniels describes how guitarists think of the blues
>> scale in terms of two different versions of what I'll call
>> the 'minor' pentatonic: a 'basic' and a 'relative':
>>
>> [Key of C]
>>
>> Basic: C - Eb - F - G - Bb (- C)
>>
>> Relative: A - C - D - E - G (- A)
>
> This tidy theory appears to suffer from a similar defect to Paul
> Hahn's otherwise tidy theory, namely it leaves out an important
> note.
>
> What happened to the bV, i.e. the F#/Gb?

[Paul Erlich as Brett Barbaro, TD 173.5]
> Actually, Daniels' theory is far more related to how the blues
> actually works than Hahn's.

I wanted to add to this that Daniels was giving here, in an
early chapter of his book, the *basic* starting-point for blues
guitar. He makes a point in later chapters of emphasizing that
great soloing involves *bending* the 'blue' notes, and describing
how to do that (without microtonal quantification, however).

The F#/Gb would be one of these: a sharpened F or a flattened G,
as opposed to actually being a distinct scale-note itself.

[Erlich]
> In the blues, besides the so-called "blues scale", one often
> uses the major pentatonic, but rarely for the whole song
> (outside of country music) -- more often one alternates passages
> of major pentatonic with ones in the minor pentatonic or blues
> scale.

Yes, this was a point I made in my original posting on Daniels.

In the same way I have described above regarding F#/Gb,
when the 'relative' or 'major' version is in effect,
the D#/Eb would not be a scale-tone itself, but rather
a sharpened D or a flattened E.

Of course on a guitar, it is only possible to fret a note
below the 'target' and bend upwards. My description about
'flattened' notes is concerning the theory or the vocals.

[Erlich]
> Chords are not constructed from the blues scale. It is a purely
> melodic scale.

I was going to say this in response to Dave myself.
But his lattices of the 7-limit blues scales are interesting.
(I made several myself, years ago; some are in my book.)

[Erlich]
> The chords used under the blues scale are usually major or
> dominant seventh chords.

It's important to emphasize that in the blues, the '7th' is
used as a *harmonic 7th* (7:4) in virtually every chord.

I feel this rational interpretation is valid because these
chords *do not* follow the type of 'dominant 7th' resolution
rules that classical music uses (which require a non-harmonic
'7th'). The '7th' of the chord simply 'sits there' with the
'root', '3rd', and '5th'.

[Erlich]
> Gb might occur as the seventh of an Ab7 chord in a C minor
> blues, but much more commonly it is a non-harmonic tone.

Absolutely. I mentioned in a follow-up post about how
blues pianists will use the 12-eq '#IV/bV' to represent
microtonal variations on both the '4th' (ascending) and
the '5th' (descending).

At the same time, I've found that the '#IV/bV' can often
be analyzed as a harmonic tone: it's simply an 11:8, or
sometimes a 7:5 or 10:7, and *possibly* a 23:16, altho
I'm not at all sure that such a high prime is really
useful in describing blues, especially since 23:16 is
only ~11 cents higher than the much simpler 10:7.

In my rummaging thru old Tuning Digests, I found one somewhere
where someone wondered why the blues is characterized so often
as 7-limit music, as he thought 11-limit ratios more closely
expressed the 'blue' notes.

I'd have to agree with this at least in part.

The preponderant use of the harmonic '7th' in blues *harmony*
certainly makes '7-limit' an apt description of that.

But *melodically*, my ears find great blues vocals and guitar
solos permeated with 11-limit ratios, or at least notes that
come close enough in pitch to those ratios that they can be
useful as a description of what's going on.

I've found in my experiments that a reasonably small 11-limit
system can come 'close enough', say 12 cents or so, to representing
any higher-prime-limit ratios. At any rate, unless I'm *really*
listening hard, as under experimental conditions, in actual music
I usually can't tell the difference, , between, for example, 18:11
[~852.6 cents] and 13:8 [~840.5 cents].

This is along the lines of, or actually even a bit better than,
the 'error' commonly accepted in 12-eq representing 5-limit.

I'm going to re-post my Semitones-chart of the Robert Johnson
vocal scale from 'Drunken Hearted Man', this time including the
ratios that I put into my notated example, in hopes that there
will be some dialog here on what ratios may be used to interpret
these pitches. My intention was to put a lattice diagram
of Johnson's vocal on my website, but I'd like some input
from others before I decide which ratios to use.

The Semitone [i.e., cents] values were figured out by ear,
and tho there may be some error, they're pretty close to
what he sang. My guiding principles in calculating ratios
were to remain as close as possible to the pitch-bend values
in the MIDI sequence (which I did by ear following the CD)
and to try to remain within the 13-prime-limit (with the
single exception of 23:16), using the simplest possible
ratios (from a prime-limit perspective).

12.22 512:405 \
11.78 405:256 D
11.73 63:32 /
11.37 27:14 \
10.72 13:7 C#
10.61 24:13 /
10.49 11:6 \
10.18 9:5 |
9.96 16:9 C
9.69 7:4 /
9.33 12:7 \
9.13 22:13 |
9.06 27:16 |
8.98 42:25 B
8.84 5:3 |
8.72 33:20 /
8.41 13:8 \Bb
7.73 25:16 /A#
7.19 50:33 \
7.02 3:2 |
6.80 40:27 A
6.62 22:15 /
6.49 16:11 \
6.28 23:16 Ab
6.17 10:7 G#
5.90 45:32 |
5.51 11:8 /
4.98 4:3 G
4.27 32:25 \
3.86 5:4 /F#
0.00 1:1 D
10.35 20:11 C

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
--------------------------------------------------

🔗rtomes@xxxxx.xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxx)

monz@juno.com wrote:

>It's important to emphasize that in the blues, the '7th' is
>used as a *harmonic 7th* (7:4) in virtually every chord.

I Agree.

>I feel this rational interpretation is valid because these
>chords *do not* follow the type of 'dominant 7th' resolution
>rules that classical music uses (which require a non-harmonic
>'7th').

I have been in this argument before, but I don't think that the chord
C-E-G-Bb can possibly mean anything other than the ratios 4:5:6:7 in any
system of music. It may be classically correct that Bb is 16/9 times C
or whatever (which it would be if played with an F) but the raios would
then be 36:45:54:64 which is impossibly complex to be "intentional".
IMO the old theory does not match the composers "real musical intention"
which must be 4:5:6:7 even if the instrument cannot produce that as
ratios of 36:45:54:64 can have no meaning at all. The problem is that
apart from the main notes in the key the others have multiple possible
different meanings and so a strict rule will often be wrong.

>At the same time, I've found that the '#IV/bV' can often
>be analyzed as a harmonic tone: it's simply an 11:8, or
>sometimes a 7:5 or 10:7, and *possibly* a 23:16, altho
>I'm not at all sure that such a high prime is really
>useful in describing blues, especially since 23:16 is
>only ~11 cents higher than the much simpler 10:7.

I say go with the 11:8 and forget the others. In your subsequent
discussion you also raise the 13:8 ratio which I think can occur.
However putting numbers like 7 in the denominator, where they represent
the tonic, is generally going to be wrong even if the numbers are
smaller. When in a minor then the tonic may be 5 but otherwise probably
not.

Having said that, I think that the 7 limit is adequate for most pieces
and that the 11 and 13 ratios are exceptions. I base my opinions
entirely on theoretical grounds in relation to how I understand music
originates in the universe.

-- Ray Tomes -- http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/rt-home.htm --
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[Dave Keenan, TD 172.16]
> Joe Monzo wrote:
>
>>Richard P. Daniels, 1979
>>_The Heavy Guitar Bible: a Rock Guitar Manual_
>>Cherry Lane Music, Port Chester.
>>
>>In it, Daniels describes how guitarists think of the blues
>>scale in terms of two different versions of what I'll call
>>the 'minor' pentatonic: a 'basic' and a 'relative':
>>
>>[Key of C]
>>
>>Basic: C - Eb - F - G - Bb (- C)
>>
>>Relative: A - C - D - E - G (- A)
>
>This tidy theory appears to suffer from a similar defect to Paul >Hahn's
>otherwise tidy theory, namely it leaves out an important note.
>
>What happened to the bV, i.e. the F#/Gb?

Dave, you might be interested in the "Appendix: observation
on the 'blue 3rd'" on my Robert Johnson webpage.

http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/rjohnson/drunken.htm

It doesn't specifically address the question of the '#4/b5',
but considering the fact that Johnson *consistently* sings
a 5:4 for his '3rd', and employs a variety of pitches for the
'#4/b5', what I say there may supplement what I've already
said about this in response to you.

I also really need to update that appendix to include my
observations on the 11-limit '3rds', 11:9 and 99:80 [see TD 132].

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
--------------------------------------------------

Re: blues scale

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🔗David Beardsley <xouoxno@xxxx.xxxx>

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