Blue note

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This article is about the blue note musical device. For the record label, see Blue Note Records.

In jazz and blues, blue notes are notes sung or played at a lower pitch than those of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is less than a semitone, but this varies among performers.

The blue notes correspond approximately to the flatted third, flatted fifth, and flatted seventh scale degrees, although they approximate non-equal tempered pitches found in African work songs; specifically, the flatted seventh may often be a justly tuned minor seventh. Blue notes are the most important notes in the blues scale.

In its earliest manifestations, the flatted third, or mediant, and flatted seventh, or subtonic, were the main blue notes. Emphasis on the flatted fifth, or dominant, was an innovation in bebop in the 1940s.

Blue notes are also prevalent in English folk music (Lloyd 1967, p.52-4).

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