When did Jazz Musicians start using the altered scale?

[christianm77]

A real Nerd question, true, but not one without any relevance to music.

What I am interested to know is - when did the unadulterated altered scale tonality become a thing in jazz music?

I'm not talking about the odd 1-b9-#9-3 tetrachord that could be parented by other scales, I'm talking about unambiguous altered scale tonality with the b9, #9, b5 and b13.

My suspicion is that the altered scale per se is something which came into vogue during the jazz education era - possibly as late as the 1970s, along with the other melodic minor modes. But I would be delighted and fascinated to be proven wrong!

It is also my suspicion that the half-whole and whole-half scales also cropped up a lot earlier than the altered - simply because they were known in the music of composers like Rimsky Korsakov, Messiaen and so on, and they are emergent from common diminished neighbour tone patterns.

As a result, interest will obviously focus around tunes with extended stretches of dominants, esp. altered dominants. I am studying Sid's Ahead (Milestones) as it has lots of crunchy dominant chord harmony.

[citizenk74]

Speaking for myself, about August of 2006, when I went into a store to get strings and bought a Wolf Marshal Joe Pass method book and a Les Wise book on the melodic minor and its modes. My wife also made me buy an ES-175. I'm all for marital harmony, so I conceded. I had read a lot about the mm on this site and elsewhere, and the wise Mr. Wise spelled things out for me. I practiced obsessively enough to develop a nasty case of tendonitis, and ended up playing the last few gigs before the Crash with big plastic braces on both forearms. I eventually recovered, but still have a bit of a love/hate thing with mm. Nowadays I'm more concerned with melody, period; and develop tension the old-fashioned way - by losing track of where I am.

[matt.guitarteacher]

I would be interested as well. I think Reg talked about it as being something which evolved among players out of previous usages of HM? There was apparently a tradition of adding a tone to harmonic minor to deal with aug 2nd. So, there you have an 8-note scale....

Anyway, once you have a #9 b9 1, eventually there hand to be implications for pianists especially. Christian, how is it possible that you don't have a definitive word on this? :-)

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J320A using Tapatalk

[PMB]

I can't recall any instances of the altered scale in Parker. He'll suggest other modes of the MM (e.g. the 4th mode or Lydian Dominant in his solo over the bridge of Moose the Mooche and the 5th mode or Aeolian #3 over the II7 chord in Just Friends) but they're rare exceptions and probably explainable by other means.

BTW, the altered scale was initially known as the Pomeroy scale after Herb Pomeroy, a trumpeter and Berklee educator who played with Parker. He taught so many great players and hired them for his bands so your hunch is probably correct. As for the diminished scales, Coltrane of course used them extensively.

[christianm77]

I would be interested as well. I think Reg talked about it as being something which evolved among players out of previous usages of HM? There was apparently a tradition of adding a tone to harmonic minor to deal with aug 2nd. So, there you have an 8-note scale....

Yes. This is also given in Barry Harris's teaching.

The b7 added to the HM is most common when the melody changes direction, or as an enclosure of 7 with 1. But this is similar to Classical actually.

Anyway, once you have a #9 b9 1, eventually there hand to be implications for pianists especially. Christian, how is it possible that you don't have a definitive word on this? :-)

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J320A using Tapatalk

But the b5 in combination with those is the smoking gun. The b5, of course common in Bop era (tritone sub) - but in combo with the other notes? Not here, check bar 21, Db, Gb and A. Darn.

[christianm77]

I can't recall any instances of the altered scale in Parker. He'll suggest other modes of the MM (e.g. the 4th mode or Lydian Dominant in his solo over the bridge of Moose the Mooche and the 5th mode or Aeolian #3 over the II7 chord in Just Friends) but they're rare exceptions and probably explainable by other means.

BTW, the altered scale was initially known as the Pomeroy scale after Herb Pomeroy, a trumpeter and Berklee educator who played with Parker. He taught so many great players and hired them for his bands so your hunch is probably correct. As for the diminished scales, Coltrane of course used them extensively.

Pomeroy sounds like the key....

[bako]

I don't know what and how people were thinking, but tritone subs go back much earlier than the 70's.

Db F Ab Cb Eb G Bb ------ b5 b7 b9 3 b13 1 #9
Db13(#11)/G

Harmonic events can have a melodic counterpart and visa versa.

[christianm77]

I don't know what and how people were thinking, but tritone subs go back much earlier than the 70's.

Db F Ab Cb Eb G Bb ------ b5 b7 b9 3 b13 1 #9
Db13(#11)/G

Harmonic events can have a melodic counterpart and visa versa.

Indeed.

However in a tritone sub you are just as likely to have a Gb - also tritones subs in general didn't tend to involve all of those notes - you'd often find just a triad or a 7th chord.

But yes, I think this is an important part of the history.

[PMB]

Indeed.

However in a tritone sub you are just as likely to have a Gb - also tritones subs in general didn't tend to involve all of those notes - you'd often find just a triad or a 7th chord.

But yes, I think this is an important part of the history.

Hey Christian, I was listening to Bud Powell's Collard Greens and Black Eyed Peas (Blues in the Closet) today and noticed that he plays a one octave G altered scale run in the first chorus of his solo that's repeated in a two-octave extended form in the final head. It appears in bar 4 of each section, a typical place in a blues to add tension and contains every note of the scale but the G itself, supplied in both cases at the end of the run as the fifth of the following C7 IV change. Check them out @ 0'48" and 2'41"!

[grahambop]

Have to say I really don't use the altered scale. I probably couldn't play it cleanly if you asked me to. Whenever I've tried it, I didn't like the sound of hearing all the altered notes in one go, it's just not very melodic to my ear. I do use fragments no doubt, but as part of a phrase with some altered notes only. I do recall that initially I learned how to negotiate altered chords simply by copying some Wes Montgomery ideas, not with a scale.

There's one of the Joe Pass hot licks videos where he mentions the altered scale and plays it, but gives the distinct impression he's not really very interested in using it as an approach.

But I'm more of a 'phrase' person than a 'scale' person anyway, so I'm probably biased!

[PMB]

Have to say I really don't use the altered scale. I probably couldn't play it cleanly if you asked me to. Whenever I've tried it, I didn't like the sound of hearing all the altered notes in one go, it's just not very melodic to my ear. I do use fragments no doubt, but as part of a phrase with some altered notes only. I do recall that initially I learned how to negotiate altered chords simply by copying some Wes Montgomery ideas, not with a scale.

There's one of the Joe Pass hot licks videos where he mentions the altered scale and plays it, but gives the distinct impression he's not really very interested in using it as an approach.

But I'm more of a 'phrase' person than a 'scale' person anyway, so I'm probably biased!

I get what you're saying Graham but you could say the same about the major scale. I can't imagine ever playing it in an unadulterated form during a solo but tons of basic jazz phrases are comprised solely of notes from that scale.

[christianm77]

Hey Christian, I was listening to Bud Powell's Collard Greens and Black Eyed Peas (Blues in the Closet) today and noticed that he plays a one octave G altered scale run in the first chorus of his solo that's repeated in a two-octave extended form in the final head. It appears in bar 4 of each section, a typical place in a blues to add tension and contains every note of the scale but the G itself, supplied in both cases at the end of the run as the fifth of the following C7 IV change. Check them out @ 0'48" and 2'41"!

I'm going to take a very close listen to this.

Incidentally Bud was an adroit user of the whole tone scale, which is pretty close to the altered, all told.

Altered: G Ab Bb B Db Eb F
Whole Tone: G A B Db Eb F

One aspect of the altered scale which is significant is the Db B - which encloses C. This is a common enclosure in bop, as I have mentioned.

In any case there are really two sides to my question
1) When did musicians use a sound that could be interpreted as the altered scale?
2) When did musicians consciously think of that sound as an altered scale?

We'd expect 1) to come a lot earlier. The altered scale does neatly group a number of approaches into a handy seven note scale.

We can see it as a fusion of the whole tone scale coupled with the common 3-#2-b2-1 tetrachord on a dom7

[grahambop]

I get what you're saying Graham but you could say the same about the major scale. I can't imagine ever playing it in an unadulterated form during a solo but tons of basic jazz phrases are comprised solely of notes from that scale.

Probably didn't express myself very well, what I meant was I could happily conceive a line that used all the major scale notes (albeit not in scale order). But I doubt I'd ever play a run that contained all the altered notes (again not in scale order). It's just too many tensions in one line, in one go, for me.

To be honest I probably should clean up my scales a bit. But I have very little practice time as it is, they're not a priority! (I should stress that I did learn the major, minor, dominant and chromatic scales when I was a teenager taking classical guitar lessons, so a lot of that stuff is still 'under the fingers' as it were).

[pingu]

A night in Tunisia ?

[matt.guitarteacher]

Whenever I've tried it, I didn't like the sound of hearing all the altered notes in one go, it's just not very melodic to my ear. I do use fragments no doubt, but as part of a phrase with some altered notes only. I do recall that initially I learned how to negotiate altered chords simply by copying some Wes Montgomery ideas, not with a scale.

This is way I always used to feel about the altered scale. you play all of those funky notes and try to make them sound good for dominant , and it just seems forced or something.

The thing that really changed my perception of altered and its use the most was watching Reg's videos and reading his posts concerning using altered and other outside pitch collections to target chords. He talked about a lot of things which didn't make any sense at the time, like "using melodic minor to organize blue notes " etc. He always used melodic and harmonic rhythm in a way which made outside sounds seem quite natural and more "inside".

For me, now, a more natural way to understand and hear altered is to begin by viewing it as a pool of notes for targeting another chord. So, making D altered fit over a D7 chord is probably more difficult to feel in the beginning than making D altered fit over G maj7. ( he also deals with this in the harmonic rhythm aspect of "going altered "on the weak side of the phrase . Later.)

As long as you resolve the last note out of altered, and back to some kind of target chord tone at the end, this example is actually pretty vanilla and basic jazz. For example, the most contentious aspect of the altered scale, in this discussion, appears to be the sharp five/ flat five, but again, in the context of an actual target chord , these are super vanilla sounds. Maybe "passing tone" is the beginning context and eventually you get to just liking them on sustained dominant sounds as well. Personal taste I style/context guess.

Anyway, D altered, spelled in the context of Gmaj7: Ab, Bb resolve nicely to A. Bb, C resolve nicely to B. "Yeah, but those are just basic chromatic approaches. You don't have to think melodic minor."

Somewhat semantics? Okay. Maybe partly philosophical, but that organization also immediately gives you context for the type of chord voicings you might play over G major seven, if you're viewing those "just approach tones" from an organizational framework like melodic minor.

[christianm77]

I don't want to talk about how to use the altered scale here. I'm just interested in the history.

[christianm77]

A night in Tunisia ?

You are not wrong - BUT - this is not unambiguous.

The notes of the line are:

A Bb C# F C Bb F G# A

These notes could be:

All belonging to the Reg's 8 note D harmonic minor scale (mode V) - a very common scale in this era.

A Bb C C# D E F G

except for the G# which we might see as a LNT below the 5 of D minor

OR

All belonging to the tritone substituted dominant scale (i.e. Eb mixolydian) with the initial A being a LNT to the 5th of the Eb7, resolving to A on Dm

Eb F G Ab Bb C Db

Of course, in modern terms we would analyse them as an altered scale perhaps with a chromatic LNT on the 5 of the I chord, but that is not of course any indication of how Dizzy looked at it.

Standard bop era practice appears to be to use the Reg minor (as I am now calling it whether he likes it or not) or make a tritone sub, so that's how I tend to view that line.

[christianm77]

Hey Christian, I was listening to Bud Powell's Collard Greens and Black Eyed Peas (Blues in the Closet) today and noticed that he plays a one octave G altered scale run in the first chorus of his solo that's repeated in a two-octave extended form in the final head. It appears in bar 4 of each section, a typical place in a blues to add tension and contains every note of the scale but the G itself, supplied in both cases at the end of the run as the fifth of the following C7 IV change. Check them out @ 0'48" and 2'41"!

O.K. This is a nice example.

Still not clinching though, because with that G missing until we hit the C7 we can't decide whether its a G altered or a Db dominant scale (with a Gb) - it's the same deal as with Night in Tunisia. We can interpret it that way (and why not) but it's not clinching evidence that this is the altered scale being used in the sense we understand it today.

As tritone subs were well in use at this point, it seems more likely to me that Bud would have been thinking Db7 than G7 alt. Impossible to know, though.

Barry Harris, I suspect would understand this run from the Db7 POV, and he is pretty up on his Bud.

[christianm77]

It's possible I am requiring a standard of proof that is impossible - to go to the absurd, here is a tune I wrote using A altered scale in mind:

But as the Bb is absent, we could still hear it as A whole tone with a LNT resolving to D minor pentatonic. Rats!

I think probably 'when did the Altered scale enter pedagogy?' might be easier to answer and more useful.

[ragman1]

I don't think it was used much before bebop, i.e. Parker. Classical composers like Debussy were using it - or at least the super-lochrian - before that but the actual altered scale, i.e. the mm a half up from the dominant root, wasn't prevalent before bebop. Open to correction, naturally.

[grahambop]

Maybe the lack of examples bears out my point about hardly ever playing a line incorporating all the altered notes in one go?

[matt.guitarteacher]

I don't want to talk about how to use the altered scale here. I'm just interested in the history.

But history is the simple enclosure I mentioned which implies altered in a way.

It's possible I am requiring a standard of proof that is impossible - to go to the absurd, here is a tune I wrote using A altered scale in mind:

Yeah. I would think it's a slam dunk "no", if the requirement is to have every note in the scale. Don't often have that in shorter passages, even with MAJOR, . And melodic minor isn't functional . So, it's not going to "stay there". Not quite fair. :-)

And you're certainly not going to find examples if you have to do the thing where you start from the 1 of altered, ... simply because it's not the most musical application?:

I don't think it was used much before bebop, i.e. Parker. Classical composers like Debussy were using it - or at least the super-lochrian - before that but the actual altered scale, i.e. the mm a half up from the dominant root, wasn't prevalent before bebop. Open to correction, naturally.

Maybe the lack of examples bears out my point about hardly ever playing a line incorporating all the altered notes in one go?

Again, I think this gets back to the "requirements" which one fills have to be met. I think Reg would say there are a lot of examples of D altered fragments over G major chords for example. I think the modern, nerdy, academic way in which we analyze things basically MAKES us want to have the "requirement" of seeing straight up D altered, from the root....and all entirely over straight D dominant chord. I think there aree very basic MUSICAL reasons why you don't see that in early examples. Altered tones are usually used to target something ELSE .

The altered scale is often more of a theoretical construct for describing the pitch collections of "outside " pitches. D altered is often more "G major" then it is "D7". I think the desire to hear them as stable over anything, even a dominant chord, much of the time, IS the problem.

[John A.]

"I'm talking about unambiguous altered scale tonality with the b9, #9, b5 and b13. "

It seems to me there's tons of altered stuff in Ellington (and whole tone scales, and chromaticism ...). It's in his piano playing, in the arrangements, and in the horn solos. I don't know where the boundary is between "lots of altered tones" and "altered tonality" though. Anyway, listen to Tonk and tell me if that qualifies. Ditto for Art Tatum (who employed every device of alteration and reharmonization you can imagine), though I can't think of a specific example at the moment.

John

[christianm77]

I don't think it was used much before bebop, i.e. Parker. Classical composers like Debussy were using it - or at least the super-lochrian - before that but the actual altered scale, i.e. the mm a half up from the dominant root, wasn't prevalent before bebop. Open to correction, naturally.

Is there a clear musical example of Debussy using this scale, anyone?

I mean people say this stuff, but I would love to listen to an actual piece of music with this in.

Seems fair enough - scale with every note flat but the root, something Busoni etc might have been into. You don't need to frame the scale as a melodic minor mode necessarily.

[christianm77]

But history is the simple enclosure I mentioned which implies altered in a way.

Well it's not the whole history. I mean 1964 and 1975 are history now, too. The development of jazz pedagogy is interesting to me too, not just what cats did in 1948.

Yeah. I would think it's a slam dunk "no", if the requirement is to have every note in the scale. Don't often have that in shorter passages, even with MAJOR, . And melodic minor isn't functional . So, it's not going to "stay there". Not quite fair. :-)

And you're certainly not going to find examples if you have to do the thing where you start from the 1 of altered, ... simply because it's not the most musical application?:



Again, I think this gets back to the "requirements" which one fills have to be met. I think Reg would say there are a lot of examples of D altered fragments over G major chords for example. I think the modern, nerdy, academic way in which we analyze things basically MAKES us want to have the "requirement" of seeing straight up D altered, from the root....and all entirely over straight D dominant chord. I think there aree very basic MUSICAL reasons why you don't see that in early examples. Altered tones are usually used to target something ELSE .

I agree. This question is really about the use of the seven note altered scale as a conceptual tool. It's a tool I have always found a bit difficult to use in fact, even now I tend to find ways around it.

Altered tones are also used harmonically. Probably the earliest popular example in jazz was the #5... Although #11 has been in use since the 19th century (at least), and Bach was happy with b9.

Also what happens when you put a minor blues tonality with a V7 chord.

The altered scale is often more of a theoretical construct for describing the pitch collections of "outside " pitches. D altered is often more "G major" then it is "D7". I think the desire to hear them as stable over anything, even a dominant chord, much of the time, IS the problem.

And yet... Fruity dominant harmony has been in jazz since the days of Ellington.