Scales have been a popular thing to practice in both the jazz and classical world for years. Playing through scales as been compared to a painter mixing paints from the primary colors.
Scale practice can help you hear subtleties in harmony and melody while at the same time, building applicable technique on your instrument.
This is the simple way I like to work on scales:
1. Play a voicing or an arpeggio that outlines the chord or harmony that the scale will be heard with or against.
2. Play the scale trying to the underlying sound of the chord.
3. Play that same type of scale through the 12 keys.
This lesson covers 3 common scales derived from melodic minor harmony:
1. The locrian raised 2 scale (over -7b5 nat 9)
2. The altered scale (over 7#9,b9,#11,#5)
3. The lydian augmented scale (over major 7, #5,#11, 13)
This approach can be applied to and chord/scale combination and should help you hear the underlying harmony and the melodic sound of the scale.
Finding melodies on a single note instrument that really bring out the sound of more complex types of harmony is often a challenge. Here’s a Major 7 #5 melody I found the other day while doing some slow improvisation. It’s played in triplets starting on beat one for the bar.
Like many of the other material on the blog, I’d recommend playing it displaced by one or two triplets as well and perhaps in 8th notes.
If you have the patience and/or carpal tunnel/RSI problems try singing the line with the mp3 below while visualizing the fingerings. Using this method, you can practice a long time with no injury or fatigue plus it’s really much better ear training.
Sometimes finding interesting substitutions for a Dominant 7th can lead to some new melodic ideas and some fresh inspiration in an otherwise mundane harmonic environment. This exercise uses Major 7 (#5) descending by major 3rds over one dominant 7th to create an idea that sounds slightly different than a standard Lydian Dominant melody. Over C7 the melody will outline Bb Major 7(#5), Gb Major 7(#5), D Major 7(#5) and back to Bb Major 7(#5). By playing a sequential motif grouped in 5 over this descending Major 7(#5) progression, we get an interesting melody that still sounds like C7 yet introduces some well organized approach notes. The exercise is played in eight-notes and than again in triplets. The PDF contains a more detailed explanation of both the Major 7(#5) substitutions and the groupings of 5. It’s also interesting to notice that the entire melodic/harmonic phrase comes from the classical augmented scale: over C7 the Bb classical augmented scale is Bb Db D F Gb A Bb (which is comprised of 2 augmented triads a half step apart: Bb augmented triad and A augmented triad). This melodic exercise works over major and minor chords as well… The melody that I’ve associated with C7 could therefore be played over Bb Major 7, Gb Major 7, or D Major 7 or their relative minors; G minor, Eb minor and B minor. Anyway, the options are limitless once you add some rhythmic variation.
