In jazz and blues music, blue notes are notes added to the major scale for expressive quality, loosely defined by musicians to be an alteration to a scale or chord that makes it sound like the blues.

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 mediant and 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).

See also

• Blue Note Records

Source

• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
  • Lloyd (1967).