How do you play scales over jazz chords so that you're playing the right notes
but not making it sound just like you're playing scales well today
i'm going to show you a melodic approach to making scales musical coming right up
what's up brent here from learn jazz standards where we help musicians just like you learn how
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and hit that bell notification so you never miss out on anything going on here now when
you're trying to get into jazz improv it's very natural to ask the question what scales
do i play over minor seventh chords or major seventh chords or half diminished seventh chords
totally acceptable because we want to play the right notes and we want to be able to improvise
over these jazz standards however there is a big problem with taking this approach
and thinking about scales simply from this way for example a tune like stella by starlight is
one that is kind of complicated and confusing and scales could be helpful however when we take
a look at what scales are over top of this jazz standard we see locrian altered dorian mixolydian
aeolian all sorts of different scale options that we can use which are great but in context
they don't really mean as much for example when we take a look at part of the tune where we go
it's a b flat major 7 to an e minor 7 flat 5
to an a7 to a d minor 7 we could say over top of the b flat major 7 we could play ionian
and over top of the e minor 7 flat 5 we could play the locrian mode
and over the a7 the 5 chord we could perhaps play the a altered scale
right and then over top of the d minor seven the one chord one option would be the aeolian mode
however just looking at these notes by themselves we can tell that this really isn't very musical
and it doesn't take something very important into context taking a look at this tune we can
actually see that in context the b flat major 7 is the one chord it's the parent key center
and the e minor 7 flat 5 a7 to a d minor 7 is what we would call a 2 5 1 of 3 the d minor 7
being the three chord within b flat major now even more importantly we want to look at what chord is
going before the d minor 7 and what's coming after the d minor seven chord after d minor seven is
b flat minor seven to e flat seven so when we're trying to make musical choices if we're just
simply saying we're gonna play the aeolian scale over top of the d minor seven we're
completely missing the point of the idea that we're trying to move from one chord to the next
so instead of actually thinking about what scales we should play over top of chords we should be
thinking about how can i resolve to each chord and what notes within a scale can i use to resolve to
that chord so i'm gonna show you how i take scales and make them musical so it doesn't sound like i'm
just playing scales but i'd love to hear from you in the comments below or the show notes is what do
you do to make scales sound musical and not sound like scales would love to hear your thoughts so
the first thing that i would do to make the scales musical is first of all to get rid of the scales
all together and instead focus on the core structure of the chords which is of course
the chord tones so if we take a look at the b flat major seven the e minor seven flat five
and the d minor seven we can go down to the root third fifth and the seventh of the chords now i
always like to start with the chord tones because the chord tones are the most important notes we
want to target in our melodic lines to really make the chords come out in our solos so over top of a
b flat major root third fifth seventh over top of an e minor seven flat five we've got root third
fifth seventh and then over top of the a seventh we got the root third fifth seventh now depending
on the quality of the chord the third will be flatted or the seventh will be flatted
or the fifth will be flat in the case of the half diminished chord but we want to be able to
identify what those chord tones are first because those are the notes that i want to be highlighting
and resolving to and then we can go back and think about the scales that we could possibly play
over top like the ionian or the locrian or the altered or the aeolian and essentially
we're just thinking about those notes as filling in the gaps between the chord tones
we just need to figure out how to arrange them in such a way that it actually sounds like a super
badass solo which brings me to the actual music so what i want to do is i want to go
over this locrian sharp 2 lick which is using the locarian sharp 2 scale as well
as the altered scale but we're going to make it really musical so first let's listen to the way
this lick sounds and then we'll go ahead and try to understand it how it fits in with the scales
all right and let's play it one more time just to get a sense of what it sounds like again
okay that's all over top of a g minor seven flat five a c seven flat nine are altered to an f minor
7 or in this case an f minor 9. so first what i want to do is i want to just isolate exactly
what the chord tones are right because we do have a musical line here before we get to the scales
let's talk about what those chord tones are so the very first note that in the g minor seven flat
five that i played in this lick is is a b flat okay a b flat that b flat is our very first chord
tone all right and the b flat is the flat three okay so we're using the flat three then we come to
the f natural now the f natural is the flat seven right so so far we're playing flat three and the
flat 7 and then we have the g which is of course just the root all right and then we have again
the f that's the flat 7 and then finally we have the d flat which is the flat five and i actually
missed the d flat over here as well so we're really hitting all the chord tones we're hitting
the flat three we're hitting the flat five we're hitting the flat seven we're hitting the root in
this line and then we add the locrian sharp two which is the uh the scale that i'm choosing to
play over there so locrian sharp two it's just a locrian scale with a sharp two in it instead
so it's that a natural in the g minor seven that we're really highlighting so we have our
c pickup note so then we go c natural to a natural is the first note of the bar with g minor 7.
right so sounds really nice but we're really just focusing on those chord tones but adding
that sharp two from the locrian sharp two in to the mix now that sounds actually pretty musical
we're highlighting the chord changes we're adding that sharp two color tone in there and it sounds
really really good okay now let's take a look at the c7 chord that's the five
chord that we need to find out what are the chord tones that we're actually targeting in this line
okay so the first one is the third okay that's e natural so e natural is a really powerful note uh
it's that third the third really makes the chords pop then we have the c natural that's of course
the root and then finally we have the b flat okay the b flat is the flat seven so we're hitting the
thirds and the sevenths and we're hitting the root and then the cool thing is we're using
the altered scale so altered notes within this chord to really make this super interesting right
like that's a that's a really interesting sound over top of a c7
so the first note is an e flat okay the e flat is the sharp nine
okay then we're hitting an a flat the a flat is the flat 13.
then we're hitting that e natural that's the third we talked about then we're hitting c
that's the root so and then we're hitting d flat what is d flat that is the flat nine
right then we're hitting the b flat right we talked about that being the flat seven and then
the g flat this is our sharp eleven so lots of awesome alternates in here then an a flat that
really is just resolving to the g natural which is the ninth of our one chord which is f minor
so in summary we want to be using scales in order to resolve to chord tones so we can make
more musical sounding lines make scales musical and play
better melodic jazz solos and by the way if you're someone who's like hey i actually don't even know
what scales should i play over different kinds of seventh chords well i have a video up on
the screen right now that is a crash course on what scales to use over seventh chords
so do make sure you check out that one that could be helpful for you and by the way we do this stuff
every single month in our ljs inner circle membership working on creating better solos
better improvisation and making scales musical we even have a course called making skills musical
101 so check that out at ljs innercircle.com all right that's all for today's video make sure you
like this video make sure you subscribe if you found it useful and i'll see you in the next one