**** Notes:
The Handy innovation which had the most impact on popular music was the introduction of the Negro folk singer’s frequent use of the flatten third (and, though less often, the flatted seventh). Identified by by Jazz fans and commercial songwriters alike as"blue notes" .
Frogman, HELP!!!!! ****
Be careful what you ask for 😊
There are seven notes in the most common scale in music, the Major scale. For the sake of this explanation let’s look at the C Major scale which would be played on only the white keys on a keyboard. In the key of C Major the scale would start on a C and would be: C, D, E, F, G, A, B. Each ascending note of the scale corresponds to a specific frequency in Hertz with a corresponding acoustical wavelength. In a Major scale there are two notes that are referred to as leading tones; they are the third (E) and seventh (B) notes of the scale. The reason that they are referred to as leading tones is that the difference in Hertz, or distance, between each of them (the third and the seventh) and the following note in the ascending scale is much smaller than the difference between any other two notes in the scale. In the context of music this proximity to the following note of the scale creates the FEELING of the third and seventh of the scale wanting to move (resolve) to the following note of the scale. The third (E) of the Major scale wants to move to the fourth (F) and the seventh (B) wants to move to the “octave”, which would be another C. This C would have a frequency in Hertz that is ROUGHLY twice that of the lower C that the scale started on. Keep in mind that all this is a simplification.
In the Blues, what gives the music its distinctive “bluesy” sound is that the third (E) and seventh (B) notes of the scale are played a half step lower than in a Major scale. When playing the Blues, instead of playing the white keys corresponding to the third and seventh notes of the scale, you would play the black key just behind the white key corresponding to the third and seventh of the scale. You are then playing a third and seventh that are lower in pitch by ROUGHLY half the frequency in Hertz than they are in a Major scale; they then become a “flatted” third or seventh. Also referred to as “blue notes”.
Now, where the quoted liner notes go wrong, or at least are misleading, is that while it may be true that Handy “introduced” this technique to popular music (published music, as Rok points out) it was hardly an “innovation”.
While I have some ideas as to why, I don’t understand the resistance (political/personal?) on the part of some to the well documented wealth of musicological evidence that the folk music traditions of any people travel with them when they go, willingly or not, to a different land.
Just one example of many available. If you can’t hear the connection to Blues as we know it in this music which goes back centuries before the creation of American Blues, I recommend Q-Tips moistened in peroxide ☺️
Flatted thirds and sevenths:
https://youtu.be/VzqDq2R7KT0
