Sometimes working with a synthetic scale can be rewarding and help free you from your normal melodic ideas. I still have a 12 sided die from the Dungeon and Dragon days of the early 80’s and by assigning 12 notes to 12 numbers I can roll some crazy scales to work from.
Here’s one scale that works well in one of it’s modes as a Major 7 with a #9, #11 and b13. It also contains the natural 5th, major 3rd, major 7th and root). A scale with lot’s of half steps and odd intervals can lead you to lots of new melodic ideas.
In this short lesson, just play the scale ascending and descending through the keys. To explore the sound further you might want to use a drone or pedal on the root and stay in one key for a while, flushing out some of the melodic material you feel sounds interesting. After a little while over the drone you’ll begin to hear some nice pathways that still outline the major sound while adding some interesting surrounding color.
~Enjoy!
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