So what are the most important scales that will help you improvise over
jazz standards let's talk about that so when i talk about scales i like to keep
things very simple so i'm just gonna be going over what i consider to be the most
important scales over the five qualities of seventh chords seventh chords being
the most common chords in jazz standards and rather than just listing them off for you one
at a time we're going to use the song stella by starlight as an example stella sounds like this
but i do want you to stick around to the very end of the video where i'm going to give a very
important disclaimer about scales and show you how you can start making scales actually
musical so stick around to the very end okay so whenever making choices about what scales
to play over chords i'm not thinking about what skill do i play over one chord i'm thinking about
the harmonic context and that's what informs my scale making decision so in the case of cell by
starlight the first two chords are e minor 7 flat 5 and a7 so e minor 7 flat 5 and a7
and whenever i see a half diminished chord starting followed by a dominant seventh chord i
know that this is a two five in a minor key okay so half diminished followed by a dominant seven
and in this case it's unresolved it doesn't resolve to a one chord it would resolve
to a d minor seven it doesn't do that in this particular case however having that context and
harmonic understanding then i can start making choices over what to do with these chords so
over top of half diminished chords minor seven flat five chords one of the most common choices
and easiest choices is the locrian scale or the locrian mode and it sounds like this
okay now locrian it sounds scary it's the seventh mode of the major scale and really all that means
is that it is related to a major scale that has the seventh or the lead tone relating to it so
e would be the last tone of some major scale and we know that to be f major right so e to f
that's the last the seventh to the root again so we're really just playing the f major scale when
we're playing e locrian so that's a little bit of help to understand what notes to play if you
already know your major scale now a close second choice over top of half diminished chords would
be simply to sharp this f natural and now we have a locrian sharp two scale which sounds like this
just simply sharping that second tone of the locrian scale will give us that result and
it's another great choice to make over half diminished chords now over top of this a7
while it's not the most basic scale or the basic choice i actually like to think of altered scales
over top of dominant seventh chords that i know are gonna resolve to a minor seventh chord
and the reason i do make that choice or i think about it that way is because when you listen
to professional jazz musicians improvise often they're playing a lot of altered ideas over top of
right over top of those five to one relationships and minor keys so the
altered scale or in this case the a altered scale sounds like this
so the altered scale is a great choice to play over dominant seventh chords five chords that
resolve to a minor key okay again we wanna be looking at our harmonic context of stella so we
go back to our chords analysis and we see that the next two chords are c minor seven f seven right so
what would we play over those so when i look at that a c minor 7 to f7 that looks like a 2
5 to b flat major now again this particular progression doesn't resolve this happens a
lot in still by starlight however with that context in mind i can begin to make
choices and one of the most basic choices to make over top of any two chord in a major key
would be dorian so in this case c dorian would sound like this
okay now dorian is the second mode of the major scale so if we think c what is c the
second scale tone of in a major scale it's b flat major so really the c dorian scale
it's just like i'm playing the b flat major scale just starting on the c note okay so
c dorian for that now looking ahead we have another five chord a dominant seventh chord
but i'm actually going to make a different choice here while i could play the altered scale
mixolydian is just a basic scale to play over top so mixolydian sounds like this so f mixolydian
now mixolydian it's the fifth mode of the major scale so we're thinking f is the fifth tone of
what scale and again if we're doing our math right it is b flat major so c minor seven and f seven
are all related to b flat major but another easy way to think of that mixolydian scale is like a
major scale with a flat seven in it which defines that dominant seventh chord really well okay so
that's dorian over top of two chords in major keys and mixolydian over five chords in major keys now
just to reinforce some of my decision making here we have f minor seven b flat seven to e flat major
seven as the next chords the melody goes like this f minor seven to b flat seven two e flat
major seven so that's a two five one in e flat major so again over the two we can play f dorian
over the b flat seven the five core we can play mixolydian
and then over the e flat major seven we can play ionian now ionian is just another fancy way to
say the major scale so e flat major now this a flat seven chord it's kind of interesting and
there's a lot of theoretical analysis you could put into this technically it's what we call a
backdoor dominant meaning it's actually resolving to this chord right here the b flat major chord
right but i won't go too deep into that right now but when you see a dominant seventh chord just
kind of hanging out right there again just a basic choice like the mixolydian would be a great choice
a flat mixolydian now i want to fast forward really quickly to bars 10 and 11 where we
have an e minor 7 flat 5 and a7 and a d minor 7. and the melody goes like this
okay so that's a 2 5 1 and d minor and we already know that we can play the locrian over top of the
e minor 7 flat 5 the altered scale over the a7 and then over top of the d minor seven one chord
a good choice could be aeolian which is really just a natural minor scale so d natural minor
is a great choice over top of a one chord however you can also play a dorian scale over top of minor
one chords you can also play melodic minor over top of those chords if you want that kind of minor
major seventh sound it all works i just think aeolian is a really simple one to go for so now
we've covered four qualities of seventh chords at this point we're only missing one so we have our
major seventh chords we can play ionian or major are minor seventh chords if it's a two chord we
can play dorian or if it's a one chord we can play aeolian dorian or melodic minor now we also have
dominant seven so dominant seven we could play an altered scale if it's resolving to a minor chord
and we can also play mixolydian if it's resolving to a major chord over top of our half diminished
chords we can play either the locrian scale or the locrian sharp 2 scale so before we continue what
i'd love to hear from you in the comments or the show notes below is what scales do you think are
most important for jazz improvisation and what are your favorite ones that you find the most useful
would love to hear your thoughts now the fifth quality of seventh chord is the fully diminished
seventh chord and there's not a fully diminished seventh chord in the jam session chord changes of
stella by starlight but for example in have you met miss jones there's an f major seven to an
f sharp diminished seven to a g minor seven to a c7 and so what can we play over top of that
f sharp diminished seventh well the most basic scale that you can play over a diminished seventh
chord is the whole half diminished scale and it sounds like this one disclaimer about playing the
whole half diminished scale is i think it can sound kind of strange when you're improvising
unless you're explicitly targeting those chord tones so when using the diminished
seventh and playing the whole half diminished focus more on the actual chord tones than you
are the notes in between and thinking about the notes in between as simple resolutions
to those chord tones and again the whole half really just means that the scale is made up of
whole steps and half steps so here's a really important disclaimer about using scales when it
comes to jazz improvisation i like to think of scales as kind of like training wheels so think
when you have training wheels when you're learning how to ride a bike it's really useful to get you
up and going and started and if you didn't have them it may be very difficult for you to learn how
to ride that bike but after a while you need to take those training wheels off and start going to
the next thing and one thing that you can do is use strategies that will help you make scales
musical so i actually have a video on the screen right now they'll help you do that it's some
exercises that explicitly help you take scales through multiple different levels and make them
musical and turn into actual jazz solos so do make sure you click on that video and move on to that
one so that's all for today's video thanks for watching if you found it valuable make sure you
like the video and make sure you subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next one cheers