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The term blues scale refers to several different scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. A blues scale is often formed by the addition of an out-of-key "blue note" to an existing scale, notably the flat fifth addition to the minor pentatonic scale or the addition of the minor third to a major pentatonic scale. However, the heptatonic blues scale can be considered a major scale with altered intervals.
The first known published instance of this scale is Jamey Aebersold's How to Play Jazz and Improvise Volume 1 (1970 revision, p. 26), and Jerry Coker claims that David Baker may have been the first educator to organise this particular collection of notes pedagogically as a scale to be taught in helping beginners evoke the sound of the blues.Thibeault, M. D. (2022). "Aebersold's Mediated Play-A-Long Pedagogy and the Invention of the Beginning Jazz Improvisation Student". Journal of Research in Music Education
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A major feature of the blues scale is the use of —notes that are played or sung microtonality, at a slightly higher or lower pitch than standard. However, since blue notes are considered alternative inflections, a blues scale may be considered to not fit the traditional definition of a scale.J. Bradford Robinson/Barry Kernfeld. "Blue Note", The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Second Edition, London (2002) At its most basic, a single version of this blues scale is commonly used over all changes (or chords) in a twelve-bar blues. Likewise, in contemporary jazz harmony, its use is commonly based upon the key rather than the individual chord.
Greenblatt defines two blues scales, the major and the minor. The major blues scale is 1, 2,3, 3, 5, 6 and the minor is 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7.Greenblatt, Dan (2011). The Blues Scales – Eb Version, . . The latter is the same as the hexatonic scale described above.
In the Movable do solfège, the hexatonic major blues scale is Solmization as "do-re-me-mi-sol-la"; In the La-based minor movable do solfège, the hexatonic minor blues scale is solmized as "la-do-re-me-mi-sol".
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Steven Smith argues that, "to assign blue notes to a 'blues scale' is a momentous mistake, then, after all, unless we alter the meaning of 'scale'".Smith, Steven G. (1992). "Blues and Our Mind-Body Problem", Popular Music, Vol. 11, No. 1. (Jan., 1992), pp. 41–52.
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A different and non-formal way of playing the scale is by the use of , added to the 3rd and 7th degrees of the minor blues scale. For example, the A minor blues scale with quarter tones is A–B–C–D–E–F–G, where is a half sharp. Also, the note D can be used as an additional note. Guitar players can raise a given note by a quarter tone through bending.
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