What are “blue notes” and how can I use them?

Here is a transcript of the video: By blue notes, the technical word is grace notes. In classical music, they would call them grace notes. In jazz and blues, they’re generally called blues notes. All it means is you’re sliding off a black key to a white key to give it a little [emphasis 00:00:47]. You’ve heard that kind of thing a lot. You hear that a lot.

All I’m doing is sliding off a black key, not all keys, but it’s usually the third of the chord, not always, though. That’s an F chord and I’m sliding off the third, the flat third to the third. If you’re on G, I’m sliding off the flat third, like this. That’s sliding off the third, fifth, third, fifth. That’s the third of the C chord, fifth, third, third. Often, it is the third of fifth. In a single run like that, it is usually the flat third or the flat third as well because the blues scale goes like that. It uses a flat seventh, a flat fifth, and a flat third.

Some people say the blues scale doesn’t include the fifth, but no. It does. It also uses the flat fifth. You need all those notes in a complete blues scale. If you’re in the key of C, that would be C, D, E flat, use E also, F, flat fifth, the fifth, flat seventh. See, I’m using all those notes as I play that blues scale. In boogie, use those all the time.

In any kind of jazz, blues, you just slide off the, usually, the third, the fifth, sometimes the seventh, but not so much the seventh because the seventh is usually flatted, so you wouldn’t that very often. You slide off the fourth to the fifth quite often and the flat third to the major third.

That’s really all you need to know about blue notes. You just use them. When you’re playing a chord, just practice sliding off that. Don’t use this in classical music or things that aren’t appropriate. You always want to be appropriate to whatever genre you’re playing. If I was playing like that, it would not be particularly appropriate to use that if I was playing a mellow music. Sometimes you can do that, but generally, save it for the jazz, blues, boogie kind of thing.

That’s it for today. Hope that helps. It’s just one of daily piano tips that you get when you sign up for it at PlayPiano.com. Come on over to sign up for them and they’re all free. Knowledge does build on knowledge. If you learn something like that every day, it kind of adds up. Hope to see you there. Bye-bye for now.

Here is the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hIdTzJG4k&feature=youtu.be
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