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Blue Notes
In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note that—for expressive purposes—is sung or played at a slightly different pitch from standard. Typically the alteration is between a quartertone and a semitone, but this varies depending on the musical context. Origins and meaning The blue notes are usually said to be the lowered third, lowered fifth, and lowered seventh scale degrees. The lowered fifth is also known as the raised fourth.Ferguson, Jim (1999). ''All Blues Soloing for Jazz Guitar: Scales, Licks, Concepts & Choruses'', p. 20. . Though the blues scale has "an inherent minor tonality, it is commonly 'forced' over major-key chord changes, resulting in a distinctively dissonant conflict of tonalities". A similar conflict occurs between the notes of the minor scale and the minor blues scale, as heard in songs such as "Why Don't You Do Right?", " Happy" and " Sweet About Me". In the case of the lowered third over the root (or the lowered seventh over the dominant), the res ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvis ...
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Scale Degree
In music theory, the scale degree is the position of a particular note on a scale relative to the tonic, the first and main note of the scale from which each octave is assumed to begin. Degrees are useful for indicating the size of intervals and chords and whether an interval is major or minor. In the most general sense, the scale degree is the number given to each step of the scale, usually starting with 1 for tonic. Defining it like this implies that a tonic is specified. For instance, the 7-tone diatonic scale may become the major scale once the proper degree has been chosen as tonic (e.g. the C-major scale C–D–E–F–G–A–B, in which C is the tonic). If the scale has no tonic, the starting degree must be chosen arbitrarily. In set theory, for instance, the 12 degrees of the chromatic scale usually are numbered starting from C=0, the twelve pitch classes being numbered from 0 to 11. In a more specific sense, scale degrees are given names that indicate their par ...
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Harmonic Series (music)
A harmonic series (also overtone series) is the sequence of harmonics, musical tones, or pure tones whose frequency is an integer multiple of a ''fundamental frequency''. Pitched musical instruments are often based on an acoustic resonator such as a string or a column of air, which oscillates at numerous modes simultaneously. At the frequencies of each vibrating mode, waves travel in both directions along the string or air column, reinforcing and canceling each other to form standing waves. Interaction with the surrounding air causes audible sound waves, which travel away from the instrument. Because of the typical spacing of the resonances, these frequencies are mostly limited to integer multiples, or harmonics, of the lowest frequency, and such multiples form the harmonic series. The musical pitch of a note is usually perceived as the lowest partial present (the fundamental frequency), which may be the one created by vibration over the full length of the string or air c ...
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Equal Temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, which gives an equal perceived step size as pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency. In classical music and Western music in general, the most common tuning system since the 18th century has been twelve-tone equal temperament (also known as 12 equal temperament, 12-TET or 12-ET; informally abbreviated to twelve equal), which divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are equal on a logarithmic scale, with a ratio equal to the 12th root of 2 ( ≈ 1.05946). That resulting smallest interval, the width of an octave, is called a semitone or half step. In Western countries the term ''equal temperament'', without qualification, generally means 12-TET. In modern times, 12-TET is usually tuned relative to a standard pit ...
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Just Intonation
In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as whole number ratios (such as 3:2 or 4:3) of frequencies. An interval tuned in this way is said to be pure, and is called a just interval. Just intervals (and chords created by combining them) consist of tones from a single harmonic series of an implied fundamental. For example, in the diagram, if the notes G3 and C4 (labelled 3 and 4) are tuned as members of the harmonic series of the lowest C, their frequencies will be 3 and 4 times the fundamental frequency. The interval ratio between C4 and G3 is therefore 4:3, a just fourth. In Western musical practice, instruments are rarely tuned using only pure intervals—the desire for different keys to have identical intervals in Western music makes this impractical. Some instruments of fixed pitch, such as electric pianos, are commonly tuned using equal temperament, in which all intervals other than octaves consist of irrational-number freq ...
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English Folk Music
The folk music of England is a tradition-based music which has existed since the later medieval period. It is often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music. Folk music traditionally was preserved and passed on orally within communities, but print and subsequently audio recordings have since become the primary means of transmission. The term is used to refer both to English traditional music and music composed or delivered in a traditional style. There are distinct regional and local variations in content and style, particularly in areas more removed from the most prominent English cities, as in Northumbria, or the West Country. Cultural interchange and processes of migration mean that English folk music, although in many ways distinctive, has significant crossovers with the music of Scotland. When English communities migrated to the United States, Canada and Australia, they brought their folk traditions with them, and many of the songs were preserved ...
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Stormy Weather (1933 Song)
"Stormy Weather" is a 1933 torch song written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. Ethel Waters first sang it at The Cotton Club night club in Harlem in 1933 and recorded it that year, and in the same year it was sung in London by Elisabeth Welch and recorded by Frances Langford. Also in 1933, for the first time the entire floor revue from Harlem's Cotton Club went on tour, playing theatres in principal cities. The revue was originally called ''The Cotton Club Parade of 1933'' but for the road tour it was changed to ''Stormy Weather Revue''; it contained the song "Stormy Weather", which was sung by Adelaide Hall. In September 1933, the group Comedian Harmonists released their German cover version, titled "''Ohne Dich''" ("Without You") with lyrics that are quite different. The song has since been performed by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Clodagh Rodgers, Reigning Sound, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, The Spaniels and others. Leo Reisman's o ...
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Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film '' The Wizard of Oz'' (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including " Over the Rainbow", Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Over the Rainbow" was voted the 20th century's No. 1 song by the RIAA and the NEA. Life and career Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, J ...
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Popular Song
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia'' It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or "folk" music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller, local audiences. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States. Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for a wide variety of genres of music that appeal to the tastes of a large segment of the population, ...
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Added Tone Chord
An added tone chord, or added note chord, is a non- tertian chord composed of a triad and an extra "added" note. Any tone that is not a seventh factor is commonly categorized as an added tone. It can be outside the tertian sequence of ascending thirds from the root, such as the added sixth or fourth, or it can be in a chord that doesn't consist of a continuous stack of thirds, such as the added thirteenth (six thirds from the root, but the chord doesn't have the previous tertian notes – the seventh, ninth or eleventh). The concept of added tones is convenient in that all notes may be related to familiar chords.Jones, George (1994). ''HarperCollins College Outline Music Theory'', p.50. . Inversions of added tone chords where the added tone is the bass note are usually simply notated as slash chords instead of added-tone chords. For example, instead of Cadd2/D, just C/D is used. An added tone such as fourth voiced below the root may suggest polytonality. The practice of add ...
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Sweet About Me
"Sweet About Me" is the second single by Australian singer-songwriter Gabriella Cilmi from her debut album, '' Lessons to Be Learned'' (2008). The song was used in commercials for Sure and Dove Bodywash in Europe, as well as a commercial for Rexona Roll On in Brazil. It additionally was used in a Hair Cuttery commercial in the U.S. for a short period of time. The song appears on the international soundtrack to the Brazilian telenovela ''A Favorita'' and on the soundtrack to the Portuguese telenovela ''Feitiço de Amor''. It was also featured in the "Chapter Ten: Let It Be" episode of the NBC series '' Lipstick Jungle'' and in an episode of the VH1 reality television series '' Rock of Love: Charm School''. The album edit was included on ''Wild Child: The Movie Soundtrack Party Album'', a soundtrack album of the film of the same name, released in the United Kingdom and Australia on 18 August 2008. There are two versions of the song: the album version and the radio edit. The first ...
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Happy (Pharrell Williams Song)
"Happy" is a song written, produced, and performed by American musician Pharrell Williams, released as the only single from the soundtrack album for the film ''Despicable Me 2'' (2013). The song was first released on November 21, 2013, alongside a long-form music video. The song was reissued on December 16, 2013, by Back Lot Music under exclusive license to Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music. The song also served as the lead single from Williams' second studio album, ''Girl'' (2014). The official remix features American rapper Sky Blu of LMFAO. "Happy" is an uptempo soul and neo soul song on which Williams's falsetto voice has been compared to Curtis Mayfield's by critics. The song has been highly successful, peaking at No. 1 in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and 19 other countries. It was the best-selling song of 2014 in the United States with 6.45 million copies sold for the year, as well as in the United Kingdom with 1.5 million copies ...
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