MusicTheoryCentral

Jazz Scales


All harmony starts with scales.
Therefore, it's important to become totally familiar with various scales. These will be the framework of your harmonic and melodic system. Inside each scale, you can do any number of things: practice playing them up and down; play patterns; build chords; create harmonic movement on the chords.

Below is a list of 18 scales you can practice up and down. These should be practiced from all 12 tones of the chromatic scale.

  • Major
See & Hear Score
  • Lydian
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  • Dorian
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  • Aeolian
See & Hear Score
  • Dominant
See & Hear Score
  • Dominant sharp11
See & Hear Score
  • Mixolydian flat13
See & Hear Score
  • Superlocrian
See & Hear Score
  • Phrygian
See & Hear Score
  • Locrian
See & Hear Score
  • Locrian natural2
See & Hear Score
  • Harmonic Minor
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  • Melodic Minor
See & Hear Score
  • Dorian flat2
See & Hear Scale
  • Lydian Augmented
See & Hear Scale
  • Diminished
See & Hear Score
  • Major6/Diminished
See & Hear Score
  • Whole Tone
See & Hear Scale

Here is a summary of 17 scales which you can print for quick reference

Once you are totally familiar with the basic scales, you can start building chords on the scales. Start with simple 3 or 4 note chords, like triads and seventh chords, and experiment with different voicings. For example, a Cmaj7 can be voiced in multiple ways, as seen in this example.

The next thing to practice is
moving a voicing up a scale. Pick a voicing and pick a scale, and then play that voicing from each of the 7 notes of the chosen scale. Here are some examples:

  • Play the Cmaj7 (drop 2) voicing on each of the 7 notes of the C major scale, as shown here.
  • Play the Cmaj (drop 2, 4) voicing on each of the 8 notes of the Cmaj6/dim scale, as shown here.

The reason this is a useful exercise is that you can use fragments of these chordal progressions to harmonize melodies, or create "harmonic fillers" to enrich the harmony of a song. For example, on the opening phrase of "For Heaven's Sake".

Another powerful technique that generates new chord voicings is the use of inversions. If we take the Cmaj7 (drop 2) voicing, shown in the example above, and shift each note to the chord factor directly above it, we get an inversion, as shown here. Please note that this is not the same as moving the lowest note to the top, as shown here.

For every triad there are 3 positions (inversions), and for every 7th chord there are 4 positions (inversions).

To summarize the main points covered so far: There are 3 basic ways to generate chord voicings:


  • Pick a specific distribution of notes for a specific chord (i.e. create a voicing from scratch)
  • Move the chosen voicing up a chosen scale
  • Find all the inversions of the chosen voicing

Mastering the above three techniques leads to a vast number of chords and chord sequences that can be applied in many musical situations. However, there is something missing: appoggiaturas! Even though you may have a wide variety of chords to use on a tune, including substitute chords and passing chords, we are still within the realm of familiar chord structures. Introducing appoggiaturas brings a whole new meaning to harmonization, because it introduces notes that are totally unrelated to a basic chord voicing, but which immediately resolve to that chord, thus providing a very interesting tension-resolution device.

Here's the definition of appoggiatura:

An appoggiatura is a dissonant note (i.e. outside the chord), played on a strong beat, and resolving to an adjacent consonant chord tone. A classical example is shown here.

Appoggiaturas can also approach their resolution note from below. This means that for any given 4 note chord, there are 72 combinations of appoggiaturas, as shown here.

So, combining the 4 techniques described above - voicing, scale, inversion, and appoggiatura, we can create a formidable arsenal of harmonic devices that can find their place in numerous song harmonizations. Here is a set of examples:

Voicing Scale Inversion Appoggiatura See
Cmaj6 (drop 2) C Major Root Alto from above Score
Cmaj6 (drop 2) C Major Root Soprano from below, Bass from below Score
         
         
         
         
         
         
         





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