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The Blue Note
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The Blue Note

mookie blaylock
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Posted 09/12/09 - 01:58 AM: Subject: The Blue Note	#1
For the sake of discussion, I would like this conversation to evolve the way a jazz piece might. The topic is the blue note, which, as I understand it, is inexplicaple and intangible. It is not the note sounded, and not a half step up or down. It is not a note that can be sounded, yet it is what jazz musicians search for. I like to put things simply sometimes. I see it as a game of cat and mouse. So, for everyone's interest here, why don't we extend the conversation around the blue note. Maybe we should use the blue note as a guide for conversation. you can take it wherever you would like. Here's Thelonius Monk's, 'Round Midnight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX_...DFDD92486076A8&index=8 I might suggest to watch and listen to the way Thelonius (his body) interacts with the the blue note. The sound becomes more like a probe in a search for something imagined... made up... created. I honestly don't think he's composing and making up the notes by way of responding to the physical sound alone, but rather where the sound is in relation to the blue note. Thanks for reading. Thoughts or suggestions would be nice.
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mookie blaylock
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Posted 09/16/09 - 02:10 PM:	#2
Why make music if not for the blue note? Is it an accessory to an idea like blues-based music? Is it a metaphor of an emotion that is felt, like classically based music? So, why is classical music called music, when clearly sound becomes just a medium for emotion and forming pictures? Jazz, in my opinion, is the only music dealing heavily with sound. It is both heard and unheard (the blue note) and is the generator of the music, just like an idea can generate (engineer) matter and matter can generate (engineer) an idea. Everything in bee-bop era jazz seemed to flow from the blue note... music, emotions, ideas... even economics, social dynamics within a group of musicians and whatever you think might extend beyond that. It was a complete cultural process that began with the blue note. If you don't think this was an important idea in the history of western music, thought and society, then maybe you've missed it. thanks.
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easyjacksn
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Posted 09/17/09 - 01:25 PM:	#3
Classical music is not primarily about expressing emotion, it is the translation of thought into music. Classical pieces are examples of the highest form of intellectual aesthetics. Highly structured intellectual sculptures for the ears. Jazz is much more about expression. Blue notes in particular are about infusing feeling into the music. Classical attempts to make solid, permanent structures for critical analysis while the creations of jazz are momentary and transient, not really something that can be written down. I can see the blue note being representative of this, especially in Monk where the notes are often not even played, but implied. They aren't really there, they are created by the mind of the listener in that moment.

mookie blaylock
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Posted 09/17/09 - 07:25 PM:	#4
What do you mean by Intellectual aesthetics? Thanks
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Schlitz
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Posted 09/17/09 - 08:06 PM:	#5
The blue note is about halfway between the 3rd and flatted 3rd scale degree for any key. You can bend to get it, or if you're playing piano, you can hit both thirds at once to get a bluesy sound. There's really no mystery about the blue note.

easyjacksn
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Posted 09/17/09 - 10:46 PM:	#6
mookie blaylock wrote: What do you mean by Intellectual aesthetics? Thanks I didn't mean anything particularly special by it, just how I chose to describe it in that post. I wanted to make a distinction between the more intellectual approach of classical music and the more emotive, improvisational approach of Jazz. Classical pieces, in general, are much more logical in structure, based on strict form and intended to be complex and highly coherent, e.g. themes are presented, developed and integrated into one another to create a final, fully realized musical idea(sonata form). Much like a sound argument, a classical piece of music has rules almost axiomatic that need to be followed in order for the piece to cohere. Deviation from this preconceived background framework is generally undesirable and so the music is inherently intellectual. It must "make sense".

mookie blaylock
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Posted 09/17/09 - 10:54 PM:	#7
Schlitz wrote: The blue note is about halfway between the 3rd and flatted 3rd scale degree for any key. You can bend to get it, or if you're playing piano, you can hit both thirds at once to get a bluesy sound. There's really no mystery about the blue note. Thanks! Barring how I've misidentified the concept I'm talking about, how do you think the process of creating improvisational music works? If you begin with a "blank" soundscape, how does your process work? Do you think to yourself, "key of E... half inch bend on the Gb... hold for a half note... A whole note... quarter inch bend... etc., or is it something else? Do you try to hear what you play before you play it? If so, what does it sound like before you strum a note? I take it you're a guitar player?
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easyjacksn
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Posted 09/17/09 - 11:17 PM:	#8
Schlitz wrote: The blue note is about halfway between the 3rd and flatted 3rd scale degree for any key. You can bend to get it, or if you're playing piano, you can hit both thirds at once to get a bluesy sound. There's really no mystery about the blue note. I'm pretty sure that any note played a semitone below pitch is considered a blue note. Third or seventh usually, but not always.

mookie blaylock
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Posted 09/18/09 - 07:25 AM:	#9
easyjackson wrote: I didn't mean anything particularly special by it, just how I chose to describe it in that post. I wanted to make a distinction between the more intellectual approach of classical music and the more emotive, improvisational approach of Jazz. Classical pieces, in general, are much more logical in structure, based on strict form and intended to be complex and highly coherent, e.g. themes are presented, developed and integrated into one another to create a final, fully realized musical idea(sonata form). Much like a sound argument, a classical piece of music has rules almost axiomatic that need to be followed in order for the piece to cohere. Deviation from this preconceived background framework is generally undesirable and so the music is inherently intellectual. It must "make sense". Thanks for clarifying! If your idea of the Sonata is correct, I'm curious as to the history of classical music. I would imagine that Sonatas, as you said, are much like thoeries as they are axiomatically built. They are built on shaky grounds and the structure "makes sense". This sense that it makes is historically contingent and provisional. There is no "absolutely awesome" composition, in other words. It adheres to logical rules... confines defined by tradition that evolve in allignment with certain cultural values, like income, venues, misconstruing the original music, political climate etc. It would seem to me that early beebop jazz was a more free form of expression than classical. The confines are less rigid and sometimes are even blown out entirely. There is no axiom. There is no way to determine how it will sound to the precision and level of description the way a classical composer would be able to achieve. It is played with some amount of certainty, and responded to with some amount of certainty as well. Dances were developed around beebop. The thing that interests me with the classical music and jazz comparison, is that jass is something you can't put your finger on. You can't really point to a place in the soundscape and say, "there it is". In classical music, you can go back to the blueprints and find where that thing you like was happening and develop it, or leave it. But you would know exactly what was happening on a theoretical level. Jazz is a strong affirmation of the certainty (psychological) involved when something cannot be placed in a theoretical category and pinned down. Classical, on the other hand seems to be an affirmation of the uncertainty involved in theory-building... the uncertainty involved in being able to compose without ever making a sound, by way of determining the notes according to rigid rules. Theres always some bleed-through of these ideas from one art form to another I would think. I hope this propells some good conversation... maybe even an argument.
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ragus
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Posted 09/18/09 - 09:02 AM:	#10
mookie blaylock wrote It would seem to me that early beebop jazz was a more free form of expression than classical. The confines are less rigid and sometimes are even blown out entirely. Beebop has strong structure for improvisation to respond to. Can you point me to any examples which had no/hardly any structure?
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

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