Article on "Blue" Notes
As soneone who struggles with music theory, here is yet another article that I am capable of understnding about 10% of. This guy is obviously on his game theory-wise, so I thought it might be useful for other students at my level.
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2010/blue-notes/
Cheers
Andy
Great post wailing ptarmigan. Beyond harmonica, if one really wants to get into the weeds, check out the history of jazz in late 19th Century, very early 20th Century, New Orleans, when wind instrument musicians broke free of strict European scales, and began playing the "notes between the notes" from African traditions. The question of whether their "blue notes" came before or after harmonica players began exploring microtones might make for a great PhD dissertation!
Hey guys, thanks for your comments - the site that I linked actually has some other interesting articles too - one that discusses how the harmonica explains all of western music seems to speak to the era you are referring to , Sacuker.
:https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2015/the-harmonica-explains-all-of-western-music/
Brian, apologies for wasting your day. :) ..sounds like time well wasted to me!
Cheers
Andy
wailing: Thanks! Really fascinating stuff. I went from there to Hein's amazing 5/23/20 harmonic analysis of "Eleanor Rigby." I absolutely love his graphics. Wish we'd had this sort of thing when I was in school. (FYI, I went off to college after a real split-personality history of playing cello in classical orchestras while also playing guitar and bass in rock bands. My first college textbook was Grout's "History of Western Music," read in my dorm room while playing Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf on my portable record player. I spent 4-1/2 years arguing with professors who kept trying to tell me "You can't do that" before going into a non-musical career that interrupted my musical life for 41 years. Now that that's done, I'm loving David's approach to music theory.)
David has an exercise in this music theory studies that has the student right down the scale for each key. The article you posted talked about the blues scale in the key of C. So, one of my time wasters the other day was to figure out the blues scale for each key. I couldn’t stop there, I had to also note which notes are available on the diatonic harmonica. While most are, I found some notes required learning overblows. From this I think I now understand why PT Gazzell uses half valved reed plates.
Brian
Definitely going to have a look at that. This whole thing reminds me of when i returned to Engineering school at age 41 after working in construction for 20 years...all the stuff I knew intuitively was explained mathematially...thats kind of what is happening now with David's lessons(when the lesson clicks anyway) all the stuff that I know sounds good is explained in terms of music theory. Just wish I knew as much about music theory as i do about construction!
Cheers
Brian,
I am starting in to David's essential movements - scales lately and he has one part of the video where he leads you right up to how the 1st 2nd and 3rd positin relate to the I, IV and V chords....one of those moments where it felt light the lights were coming on a bit and some of the musical mystery was being revealed...I know i dont fully understnd it yet, but it is getting closer!
All the best
Hi Andy,
Thanks for posting the link to blues music theory. I will blame you for my wasting almost an entire day. Not having any music background and one who didn’t pay attention in school when we were supposed to be learning about music, I now find myself wanting to soak up as much music theory as I can. I’m still new to music, but as I listened to lots of podcasts with harmonica players being interviewed, I keep hearing about the flat-7th or blues notes and I did not know what they were talking about. The webpage you linked to was helpful, and as usual it also generated more questions which put me on the search or answers until the day was almost finished.
Brian in Tennessee