The Meaning of the Blues
Earlier in this chapter, we studied the blues as an expression of the fundamental motion between tonic, dominant and subdominant harmonies.
What I purposely avoided mentioning in the earlier discussion is the fact that these chords are not typically played as simple triads, but are almost always played as dominant seventh-type chords. That is, each triad is awarded the additional sonority of the minor seventh above the root (also thought of as the minor third above the fifth of the chord.
What is fascinating about the blues is to contrast the blues type of dominant seventh chord with the classical dominant seventh chord. In classical harmony, the dominant seventh chord is unstable and requires a resolution down a fifth to the tonic or temporary tonic.
In the blues (and in the jazz that was influenced by the blues) the dominant seventh chord is an acceptable harmony all to itself, without requiring resolution. There are many explanations for this, but many scholars attribute this to the presence of a "minor seventh" within the sound of a naturally vibrating string.
The V7 chord and Natural Resonance
We have thus far viewed the dominant seventh chord in a number of ways:
- It could be seen as a major triad, based on the fifth degree of the scale, with an added seventh above the triad.
- It can also be seen as a dominant triad combined with the reciprocal fifth, which combine to both fall and lift towards the tonic.
But there is another way that we discover the same seventh, the minor third above a major triad. Once again, (and probably for the last time), we turn to the harmonic series.
Here we go beyond 5-limit tonality and venture into the world of the seventh partial. In most theory books you will see this partial appear (as it does here) in parenthesis and be told that it is “out of tune” to our diatonic system and thereby unusable. But how can it be that such a rich harmonic, one that appears within the first three octave overtones, is dismissed so abruptly. Did nature make a mistake? Is our sudden infatuation with the existence of the tonic triad within the harmonic series suddenly done away with, like a quickie divorce, when the next partial is discovered?
As I have always intuitively known, and as my reading of Mathieu and Gerhard Kubik (Africa and the Blues) has corroborated, the overtonal seventh is in fact a wondrous and wondrously useful note! It was banished from European theory quite early, because its intonation did not fit within five-limit just intonation (the Bb is not at all in tune with the reciprocal third of D.) nor did it lend itself to the creation of triadic harmony.
But as Mathieu says “this partial is clearly present in the music of many cultures.” And he goes on: “Toward the end of the nineteenth century something strange and wondrous began happening to American music—the musical legacy of the African-American freed slaves began to mix with its entrenched European harmonies. By the 1920s Americans were hearing jazz and blues redolent with seventh-partial harmonies. The actual power of the seventh partial fuels the harmonic quality of a music that helped transmute the humiliations of slavery into the hard joys of survival.” (p. 126).
We reach an interesting moment in our study of harmony. Our diatonic system of equal tempered intervals, splayed out on the musical staff, does not have a place for the overtonal seventh. It is a note that falls through cracks, that exists somewhere in between a line and a space. This shows the limitations of the European system, which brought us powerful music but did not have the flexibility to take in notes that transcended the five-limit system.
As an American, I’ve always sensed that I grew up with "seventh-partial consciousness," that it is part of our collective awareness, thanks to the musical traditions of the freed African slaves and their contribution to our culture. It is truly a remarkable story: African-Americans adopted the Christian religion and learned the basis of its chordal harmony (all that we have studied to date), yet grafted onto that chordal harmony a melodic sensibility that was rooted in natural harmonics, up to and very much including the seventh partial. Africans simply knew how to hear that far into a tone, and this melodic predilection for the lowered seventh gave birth to a harmonic system in which the tritone was not at all the devil in music, in need of banishment or at least resolution, but a perfectly normal and harmonious event, a stasis in itself.
Mathieu calls this the blu note. I like it, and we’ll work with it. The blu note is derived from the seventh partial above the central spine, thus:
The blu Bb, for example, is about thirty-one cents lower than the equal tempered Bb on the piano keyboard – somewhere between a eighth and a quarter tone! It is the uniqueness of this interval, its inherent “out of tuneness” in relationship to European concepts of intonation, that give this note its particular expression.
When we put these blu sevenths (the blu Eb above the F, the blu Bb above the C and the blu F above the G) together with the central spine itself we get the following pentatonic scale:
This scale does not “fit” the piano keyboard, which is why we love blues singers and instrumentalists as much as we do. They sing within the cracks of the keyboard, or against the frets of the guitar (which is why guitar players bend the string). Each of the flat notes are in fact about a quarter tone in between the major and minor third. This becomes important when we look at the harmony of the blues progression.
Lastly, the 11th partial, which is an “out of tune” F# (a quarter tone away from the overtonal F# above the D on the central spine and about halfway between the F and F# in equal tempered tuning) is often incorporated into this pentatonic scale, creating a beautiful, strange, six note potentiality:
This scale, while it can be approximated on the piano keyboard, is really a vocal style (which sax players and guitarists and trumpeters imitate) that draws its intonation from natural harmonics. Coupled with well-tempered harmonies, it forms a beautiful blending of musical styles and ways of hearing.
The blues progression
As we saw in Chapter 5A, part 2, the Blues is a standard form that is based on a repeating harmonic pattern of 12 measures. The harmony is completely based on the triads of I, IV and V (this is the European part), with overtonal sevenths grafted on to them (this is the African part). Here is the same standard blues progression presented in the previous chapter:
Now we can look in more detail at the seventh chords that
The Roman numerals are underneath, which means that you can now think of the blues progression in many other keys, right? Many of you guitar players, of course, already know the blues, and probably a good many variations on the very basic pattern above.
This is the way you will always see it in books, but rarely will it be pointed out that the basis for these seventh chords are from the natural harmonic series rather than strictly from the four notes on a piano keyboard or guitar fretboard. In fact two things are at play here.
The sevenths above each triad is not conceptually the seventh that we find on the keyboard (although of course keyboard players have no choice but to play the key. Guitarists can at least bend the note somewhat when playing chords. Of course, they bend the note all the time when playing melody. True blues singers sing the pure overtonal seventh).
The melodic tones are based on the seventh-overtonal pentatonic scale above, but notice that the overtonal seventh of the F (Eb-) and the overtonal seventh of the C (Bb-) are dissonant to the major third of the C7 and G7 chords, and the 11th overtonal F# is dissonant to the F of the IV chord.
It is these dissonances which create, on an abstract level, the enticing pathos of the blues. Here is an example of a simple blues melody, using the notes of the full blues scale, over the harmonic progression.
This melody shows some basic principles of the blues. Often, the melody stays the same when the harmony shifts to the IV chord, because a different set of tensions are created between the melody and harmony. When it gets to the V chord, however, a different melodic shape is usually played. This melodic shape uses the middle portion of the blues scale. This then invites a return to the original melody.
This repetition pattern, with the melody remaining the same during the shift to the IV chord, is reflected by a great many blues lyrics, especially old blues. The lyrics repeat until the V chord, at which point a new phrase is sung that tends to resolve the tension or question created by the repeated opening phrase.
The bass clef, by the way, shows a standard way of voicing the blues chords for the piano. Because the perfect fifth above the root is already implied (and heard) by the fundamental, it is not often necessary to voice the fifth. This voicing, with the root, third and seventh, contains the essential notes of the harmony and are sufficient for carrying the harmonic tensions.
Of course, this is all just the background theory. The blues artist brings into this harmonic/melodic framework a history of suffering and triumph that creates the contradiction: it’s called the blues, but it makes you feel good to hear it and to play it. I remember playing in a jazz group years ago and we just finished a session of blues. The guitar player just shook his head, with a big smile on his face, and said: “Man, I don’t know why they call it the blues: I feel so good when I’m done playin’ it!”
Finally, it is of interest to contrast the blues progression with the standard progression of classical harmony. As I said previously, it is rare for classical harmony to regress from a V chord, especially a V7 chord, to a IV (to say nothing of a IV7) chord. Classical harmony is structured to respond to a the dissonant tension of the tritone inherent in a V7 chord by resolving the tension into a tonic triad. An incredible amount of extraordinarily powerful and emotive music has been created around this principle (listen to almost anything by Beethoven to understand the power of the dominant harmony and its demand for resolution; or listen to the Wagner’s Tristand und Isolde to see how a great composer expresses emotional longing by constantly leaving dominant seventh chords unresolved).
Blues harmony does not see the dominant seventh type chord as requiring resolution. This is for a very good reason. Blues harmony hears the seventh as part of the natural resonance of a tone, and bases its progression on the restful nature of this sound. Classical harmony, on the other hand, dervies its dominant seventh note from the reciprocal fourth, which is a different tone altogether, and thus not only creates a tritone with the third of the chord, but is dissonant to the actual natural seventh of the harmonic series.
Both of these systems are of course equally valid, but I find it very instructive to contrast the two. We explore it here in order for you to deepen your sensitivity to seventh chords, and to better understand the way your own ears function, growing up in a culture where the blues predominates our soundscape.
We will listen to some blues to analyze the melodic content and to gain deeper familiarity with I, IV V progression. In the last section of this chapter, we will explore part writing using mixtures of tonic, subdominant and dominant in both the major and minor modes.
<<Some blues examples will be coming soon>>
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