OK, you're notating a blues in D -- that's D mixolydian. What's your key signature, the standard 2 sharps with an accidental for every C, or 1 sharp to reflect the mode?
Don't know any rule (I never do!), but I'd use 2 sharps because 1 sharp implies a tonic on G and would introduce confusion. Bartok got away with using non-standard key signatures, but most people don't attempt them.
This is, of course, quite a different thing from the minor key baroque pieces which lacked a flat in the key signature that we would think should be there. Some modern editors add that flat, others do not. And it was, indeed, the result of modal dorian practice carrying over into the baroque period. But it strikes me that this would not carry over into neo-modal practice. I look forward to the definitive answers.
I believe the definitive answer is that blues are notated in the key of the tonic by overwhelming convention. Convention which is dictated by the ear. An ear which clearly makes the distinction between western concepts of modality and tonality and something which is derived from another plane of musical expression entirely. Hence there isn't really any choice other than notating a blues in the tonic because that's one concept that is in common. I also believe that the so-called "blues scales" are misplaced imposition on the genre and that the fundamental notion is closer to a collection of intervals which has more kinship with eastern musics like Gamelan and Chinese pentatonic for it's melodic and harmonic sense. The fact that we usually hear blues voiced on western instruments can mislead us into thinking a piece which is in a blues *form* is a blues. That's not the case at all, and I'm certainly pleased at the distinction jazz players make about their genre as being blues-derived but not strictly blues.
Philip Aker http://www.aker.ca
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