Blues Music Scales Chart for Jazz

Improvisation
 August 22, 2013 musilosophy  0 Comments
It derives from African, pentatonic and also from Arabian scales. Minor third, augmented
fourth (minor seventh too) are characteristics blues notes. It is one of the best jazz and more
used scales in this style.

It plays well on minor seventh, dominant-seventh, half

diminished and diminished chords.
In improvisation, you can use it on major seventh chords too but pay attention to blues notes:
play them like passage, grace, or turnings notes.
Every instrumentalist (a singer too) should play them very often, above all the ones in less used
tonalities (G#, C# and so on) being less common in solos. Pay attention not to overindulge in
this scale because hearing it is so boring the same sonority too much.

Moreover, blues scales are very strong and can be recognized at once; they are nice and can be
considered the top ones in solos but are to be used a little in order not to tire a listener’s ear.
 Notes in these scales can be used freely enough compared to the chord in which they are. It
means the melodic lines based on it, can be independent from chord. If you want to understand
this concept better I suggest you to study the most important page of this site, where the
construction of melody in improvisation and in composition is described.

Blues scales in music styles

Blues scales are used in many musical kinds (for example in blues, jazz, rock and roll, funk,
soul rhythm and blues, dance, pop…).
Blues scales are the most famous sounds of the XX century music. Almost all music
genres being born in the last hundred years come from blues (above all in not-classical music).
It is my favorite style, especially when it is mixed with jazz, pop and dance.

Learn all blues and other music scale

charts
Play and learn by ear all 12 blues scales. Then begin improvising on a major or minor blues
structure, just using blues scale notes. Blues scales play very well on dominant chord. A big
jazz musician wrote a sentence in his book and he was particularly struck by it when I was
eighteen and it simply said that “Blues is the Soul of Jazz”. So it can be considered one of the
most used and suitable jazz scales.

Practice to end the phrase on the different tones of a chord and to make the action I propose.
The fundamental element to build a good phrasing is that every phrase must be connected with
the previous ones.

1. Remember to vary the beginning and ending of a phrase:

 Practice to begin and to end the phrase in every point of the measure

B = Beginning tone

E = Ending tone

AVOID this bad habit : (Same beginning and ending points )

Ending of a phrase
Practice to end a phrase on different tones of a chord:

Tone Effect Style Action

Rock,
1 Pop
  Rest – Close the You You have to begin a new
phrasing phrasing

You have begin the

Tension and following phrase from
2 unbalance Jazz that note
Rest and strong
3 determination Any style No particular action
Tension, Begin from that note and
unbalance and Jazz, solve it to the tone
4 suspension Blues below

5 Rest and neutral Any style No particular action

 I suggest to begin the
A bit of tension following phrase from
6 and coloured tone Jazz, Pop that note

Jazz,
A bit of tension Blues
7 and determination Pop No particular action
This concept is very important in music improvisation.

Music phrase : phrasing

development
Practice to end the phrase on the different tones of a chord and to make the action I propose.

 Na = no particular action
 T = Tension
 Ba = Begin again
 S = Solving tone
Another example containing a wrong ending tone ( Tension is not solved or begun again).
 Whole tone, altered, pentatonic,
diminished scales
 August 22, 2013 musilosophy  0 Comments
These scales do not determine a key! Just the blues scale could be a basis for a particular key
(Blues).

 You can use them above all on dominant seventh chords to enrich
or vary the colors of improvisation.
 Be careful and always control by ear when you use diminished
scale or whole tone scales because they have notes not belonging to the
key.

Whole tone scale : Debussy scale

Whole tone scale – It contains only whole tones. I suggest to use it just on the dominant 7th
chord. Whole tone scale is used above all in Jazz music. Debussy and Ravel used this scale.
We can simplify and summarize all 12 whole tone scales to just 2 scale types : “A”; whole tone
scale and “B”; whole tone scale.
“A” whole tone scale type

“B” whole tone scale type

The other 10 whole tone scales have the same notes of these, but of course, they begin from
different tones.

For example, D whole tone scale begins from D and has the same notes of the “A”; whole tone
scale, while F whole tone scale begins from F and has the same notes of the “B” whole tone
scale

Diminished scales
 – It is made only by a sequence of half step (semitone) and whole step (tone). I suggest to use it
just on the dominant 7th and diminished 7th chord in a jazz context.

Each tone has two different diminished scale:

1. Diminished scale beginning with half step

2. Diminished scale beginning with whole step
Also, we can simplify and summarize all 12 diminished scales to just 3 scale types : “A”
diminished scale, “B” diminished scale and “C” diminished scale
“A” diminished scale type

“B” diminished scale type

“C” diminished scale type

The other 21 diminished scales have the same notes of these, but of course, they begin from
different tones.

Diminished-whole tone, altered

scale
Diminished-whole tone scale ( also called super locrian or altered scale). I suggest to use it just
on the dominant 7th chord in a jazz context.

 
 Pentatonic scales
 Pentatonic scale has just five tones; in this page there is
a pentatonic scale chart: it is like the major scale but without fourth and
seventh degrees.
 This a catchy scale and it sounds good on many chords (Maj
seventh, min 7th, 7 )
 You can use different pentatonic scales on a chord.

Learning other scales

For me these are the most used and important scales you can hear in jazz music. Modal scales
as Dorian ,Aeolian, Mixolydian, Lydian, Phrygian or Locrian scale are the major scale
beginning from other notes. For example, the Dorian scale is the major scale beginning from
the second degree.

Yesterday I gave some detailed examples of common places you can use

a tritone substitution, including some tunes that use tritone substitution in
different ways.  Today we are going to discuss some scales that you can
use to approach various tritone substitutions when you improvise.

Keep in mind that no scale is a cure-all for your jazz vocabulary ailments.
Scales are like words.  You can’t learn a language by learning a few words;
you must learn sentence structure, grammar, syntax, etc.  Scales help you
know which note choices sound consonant with a given chord change, but
they can be used incorrectly, just as words can be used incorrectly.  A
healthy dose of listening and transcribing can help you to sound authentic
when you solo.  Jazz language doesn’t come from a scale, but scales are
still important.

For this reason, there has been a movement among some jazz musicians to
speak more about “pitch collections” than scales.  Whatever floats their
boat.  I think that “pitch collection” makes it easy to conjure up a mental
picture of someone soloing using a group of notes rather than running
scales, so maybe the term is helpful.  However, many people will have no
idea what you are talking about if you say “pitch collection,” and so I
prefer to use the term “scale” instead.

Here’s  PDF on the Scales Approach to Tritone Substitution detailing several

different harmonic instances in which you can use tritone substitution
along with a corresponding scales for each chord change:

Notice that:

 The Lydian Dominant scale (1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6,

b7, 8) can be used for dominant tritone
substitutions (e.g. Eb7 and Eb Lydian
Dominant).

 The Lydian scale (1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6, 7, 8) can

be used for major 7 tritone substitutions
(e.g. Ebmaj7 and Eb Lydian).
The only major 7 tritone subs in the handout are shown in the Tadd
Dameron Turnaround Version #2, but that particular chord progression
has 3 different major 7th tritone sub chords that can all use a Lydian scale
based on the different roots, as shown.  I hope this handout helps!

I’ve discussed the major pentatonic scale here on LJS before and some of

its uses. In this post I want to briefly review the major pentatonic scale
and then talk about what I call altered pentatonic scales.

Pentatonic scales are useful because they allow you to focus your melodic
improvisation by whittling your note choice down to just 5 notes.

This gives you more freedom to play “across the bar line” since a single
pentatonic scale can often work well over multiple different chords. It also
allows you to be more selective with your note choice and focus on hitting
more “color tones,” i.e., notes from the upper extensions of chords.

I find these scales are fun and useful melodic tools to practice and
improvise with. By limiting my note choices, using pentatonics forces me
to focus on being more creative and expressive with other aspects of
improvisation such as rhythm, phrasing, using space, motivic development,
etc. I hope these scales give you melodic ideas while improvising and
practicing.

First, lets’ review the major pentatonic scale:

This scale has a wide variety of potential uses. You could play C major
pentatonic over any of the following chords:  Cmaj.6, A-7, Fmaj.7, D-11,
D7sus, Gsus, B(Phrygian) or B-11(b9,b13), F#7alt., Bbmaj7(#11), E-7(b13).

So abstractly, how are these chords related to the pentatonic scale? Let’s
rethink this in Roman numerals so we can make general rules to help us
use this scale in different keys over different chords.

If C major pentatonic is the tonic key, let’s call C the I. So if you have a
major pentatonic built from the I, the chords it works over are:

I(maj.6), VI-7, IV(maj.7), II-11, II7(sus4), V(sus4), VII(Phrygian), bV7alt.,

bVII(maj.7,#11), and III-7(b13).

And keep in mind, a minor pentatonic scale is merely a major pentatonic

scale played starting on the relative minor. So A minor pentatonic is just C
major pentatonic played starting from A.
By altering one note at a time, you can generate variations on this scale.

Here are some examples with explanations of the “parent scale” that they
are extracted or derived from as well as a list of potential chords they
work over:
You can follow the same process outlined above to take these key-specific
scales and their uses and abstract out general principles of how and when
to use them by converting the chords into Roman numerals.

Feel free to experiment with some of these and see which ones stand out
to you the most.