A Somewhat Surprising Observation About the Altered Scale

[Strat-itis]

Youtuber: Might want to watch out for the jazz ed prescription of altered for all 5 chords in minor.
Also youtuber: Makes the mistake of following the jazz ed misconception that it's phrygian domiant when it's just harmonic minor.

I don't think it's clear to me what it is that you find convoluted. For example, just to clarify, do you find working on building altered lines using the whole tone scale to be a convoluted approach?

Tonic scales do a good job in capturing tonality as the static, inside context of a tune (or a section of it).
But the note choices for tonal melodies do not always come from the tonic scale. The notes outside the scale play a key role in creating forward momentum, and adding tension and color.

Christian is correct. I don't think he's saying only play using the key center and don't add color from the chords, he's just describing what the players actually did. If you spend time transcribing or just looking over transcriptions you notice this - they used the regular minor scales, including natural minor and harmonic minor. Everything isn't jazz ed dorian and melodic minor with altered devices on the 5 chord. They would mix and match the variations of the minor scales as well as add some chordal outlining or chromatic ideas.

Summary of what Christian seems to be saying on this point:

This is completely unsurprising to me, and I expect anyone who has spent time transcribing music of this era. I really don't like the term Phrygian Dominant - I think the players would have said minor - more old school. The minor scale on dominant. I think thinking about things from the chord of the moment root all the time can obscure how diatonic things are.

But yes, the same notes by another name of course. The altered scale is rare up until the post-modal era. TBH I don't even hear it that much in post-bop. (You do get tritone subs but these are usually arpeggios.)

The most common altered dominant in a minor key is that mix of natural and harmonic minor notes.

These seems a convoluted way to conceptualise it to me. Really it's traditional diatonic minor stuff. A lot of bop lines make sense from this perspective. It's not very far away from classical, the main difference is it's a bit looser vertically (like playing the b3 over the V7 chord and so on) and rhythmically more sophisticated.

I would describe that as the default, and it makes sense that it would be.

Yes it does make sense that it would be. Those were the materials they had available at the time.

I think what happened is when the CST stuff originally came in players were adding in the melodic modes and so on on top of this diatonic basis that they'd all started with, but as time wore on more and more jazz newbies were going straight to CST and didn't do the diatonic stuff first.

I think that's probably what happened.

But the thing about minor key lines, is that they are melodies, not patterns. Talking about Phrygian dominant etc, puts us mentally a bit into the realm of 'exotic harmony', and Jazzpadd started talking about Middle Eastern sounds. Whereas in fact this stuff is in terms of the pitches absolutely rooted in European music, and that way of looking at things, to the extent of avoiding the aug 2nd at the beginning of scale runs and so on, and using octave displacement. Stuff that you see in Bach. And actually, that's congruent with the type of music education these players had, jazz players were repurposing the European music materials that were lying around - it wasn't all they were using, but it's quite a lot of it.

Another key point. If you listen to the music or analyze the transcriptions, it isn't put exotic prescribed scale on 5 chord - it's regular minor scale language but embellished tastefully with chromatics, minor scale mixture, and some chordal or altered devices.

I mean I like the altered scale, half-whole diminished in minor is the bomb.

It's all good. People come out of jazz courses that teach CST playing great every year.

But then there's another angle - what did the bop players actually do? How did jazz evolve and develop? How does it relate to older practices? What did Trane do that Cannonball didn't? etc etc. I find that stuff interesting. Not everyone does... but I do think it's good for the ears.

Right, people can approach the materials how they want, but I'd say figuring out what the musicians actually did is pretty important.

Well I mean that is how Barry Harris deals with it - although he doesn't deal with the minor's V in the same way, but that's another thread. He does this for a very specific and good reason which is that we want to focus on repurposing familiar material. (But Barry's approach is not necessarily THE bebop approach.)

One problem is the scale on the V of the minor key is not Phrygian dominant. It really depends what prevailing alterations are found in the minor key at the time. Phrygian dominant is just one. Very often you find what modern jazz musicians would call Mixo b6 or Phrygian. These are of course all emergent from the minor scales. I really dislike the terminology. You need to be aware of the harmony you are outlining within the key - IV-6 V7 etc. I don't think we need to call things a new scale depending on what scale degree we are on within the key. That seems convoluted to me.

Another is that it is IMO quite unhelpful here to get too stuck on the chord of the moment. The jazz way of dong things (at this point in history at least) less about matching the chord to an appropriate scale, but rather looser. Which makes sense because it's music made by people improvising together.

You play stuff in minor, for example. So it's my belief that many of the 'funny' notes come about simply from jazz musicians taking things from European music that would have been matched to a specific chord and ending up over different chords. In the Bach example the D is placed on the implied A-(6) chord, and the D# on the B7 chord as we might expect from textbook theory. In a bebop line it would not be unusual to find the D on the B7. This even applies to that cheeky b2 (b5 against the V7) note which probably comes from the b2 melody note in the old Neapolitan Sixth chord.

Later on jazz theorists analysed these things with reference to the chord of the moment. So even without CST terms, they look at the G7 with a Bb melody note on it and write 'G7#9'. Later jazz pedagogues with a CST approach say, oh G7altered. So you go from a C natural minor melody to a G altered scale just through decisions about what to call things. (This example is from Blue Bossa, of course.)

By always relating notes to a chord - expressed or theoretical - I think it's easy to miss other relationships like this. It's good to look at things both ways - melodic and harmonic.

Agree that the 'funny' notes are over-codified and made into a system: altered, melodic minor shifting, phrygian dominant. Bro, listen to / read the actual music, that's not what it is.

[GuyBoden]

Unsurprising.

To my ears:

A common sub was playing a dim chord that starts on the third note of the dom chord.

Bdim or G7.

So, you can play a Bdim scale over an altered G7. Or even simply, a G dim scale over an altered G7.

Also, I think that most melodic minor modes were used much later in Jazz, quite modern teaching really. I spent years on them.

[Litterick]

'All I want for Christmas' in Phrygian dominant.

[Christian Miller]

Also, I think that most melodic minor modes were used much later in Jazz, quite modern teaching really. I spent years on them.

There's always a danger of coming across like I'm an advocate of this or that note choice. I really think that's up to the musician.

Where I tend to get a bit militant is on the subject of what people played on this or that record. Not that there's not room for interpretation, but it's much easier to draw conclusions. If I can say, reasonably, that so and so uses a melodic minor scale on this or that chord, I am going to say that, even when it's questionable that's how the original player was thinking.

People say all sorts of things about bop for example, that aren't borne out in the actual pitches Charlie Parker played. A classic one is when people say he played loads of upper extensions. I mean, he did that sometimes for effect? A lot of the time he's a 1 3 5 (7) and basic scales guy, almost classical. A lot of the time 'funny notes' come from chord substitutes: bIII-7 for VI7, that kind of thing. And sometimes he wails on the blues.

I think they are trying to understand why Bird sounds so hip through the prism of vertical harmony, and it's not a harmonic thing, really.

I expect the teaching of jazz has to accept the fact that there is always an influx of students who do not of their own accord check out the music, and as a result there's a need to give people a list of things to play, be it Trane diminished licks or melodic minor patterns, which also suit the needs of an academic curriculum. I mean, I do it myself on my channel.

Those that check out the music probably develop their own ideas.

But it does give the impression to many that jazz is a neat system.

[Tal_175]

Of all the players whose transcriptions I analyzed, none of them consistently played altered lines that cleanly fell into the category of any of the chord-scales of altered dominant chords. The commonly referenced scales are, 7th mode of MM (super Locrian), 5th mode of HM (Phrygian dominant), the whole tone scale, the tritone dominant and the diminished scale. I am not only talking about very traditional players.

It's funny, Mike Stern has a book on altered scales where he covers four of the scales above in each chapter. The first lick he presents in the altered scale (Melodic Minor) he uses an unaltered 5th instead of an altered 5th.

It seems to me like good players don't hear and think the altered dominant as a strict scale but they freely use altered and unaltered notes within a line. Altered chords are heard differently than the harmonic contexts that are strongly aligned with the underlying tonal reference since going outside is the point.

[rpjazzguitar]

Students often study multiple scales.

I don't transcribe enough to really back up this opinion, but my impression is that great players don't often pick a scale and then play it strictly. Of course, there are passing tones, but, often enough, you hear somebody leaning on a tone that isn't part of the scale suggested by the rest of the line. I mean, it's all over the map.

So, for example, I'm persuaded that there's One Big Minor scale for soloing. It has R 2 b3 4 5 and then you pick a 6th (non, flatted or natural, or both) and the same for b7, 7, none or both. You use your ears to make the choices and they are inherently dependent on harmonic context. If you choose to, you can label the four combinations of 6s and 7s as dorian, natural, harmonic and melodic minor. If that's helpful to you. But, One Big Minor may be easier.

And then, the logical extreme of this argument is that there's only the chromatic scale and your ears. Which puts the student back at the beginning.

And, it occurs to me that if you "minorize everything" like Pat Martino, you only need to know One Big scale.

[Christian Miller]

Of all the players whose transcriptions I analyzed, none of them consistently played altered lines that cleanly fell into the category of any of the chord-scales of altered dominant chords. The commonly referenced scales are, 7th mode of MM (super Locrian), 5th mode of HM (Phrygian dominant), whole tone scale, tritone dominant and diminished scale. I am not only talking about very traditional players.

It's funny, Mike Stern has a book on altered scales, where he covers four of the scales above in each chapter. The first lick he presents in the altered scale (Melodic Minor) he uses an unaltered 5th instead of an altered 5th.

I believe that Gary Burton said he thinks of the altered scale to having an additional natural 5th.

It seems to me like good players don't hear and think altered chord as a strict scale but they freely use altered and unaltered notes within a line. Altered chords are heard differently than harmonic contexts that are strongly aligned with the underlying tonal reference since going outside is the point.

I think that's a good supposition. Remember however that if you use an altered scale with a natural 5th in the minor key, you aren't going outside at all because, you are playing in the minor key. Minor keys are more complex than major, but I think we are cool with raising the leading tone in the minor key no?

(In minor it would sound more "out" to use a major key dominant than an altered dominant - which you do hear in bebop. Parker has it in the second bar of Blues for Alice for example. Charlie Christian liked this sound a lot. Very angular.)

For this reason, I tend to view the V7b9 family of chords in the major key as being borrowed from the parallel minor. In that sense they are much like things like IV-6 and II-7b5 in major keys. This also fits with Barry's teaching - though he taught it in a different way. So not really out per se.

To my ears, the 'outness' comes in with the b5. That's an interesting note. The whole tone scale was the original way to get 'out' which is why Monk used it so much. And of course, there's the tritone sub. Later, you have the diminished scale, which I always associate with Trane.

Again I'd like to draw attention to what Wes plays over the F7(9) chord going into bar 13. (Also on the implied Eb7(b9) in bar 6.) The use of the leading tone as a an added note rather than a substitution for the natural seventh is quite striking to me. It's not harmonic minor per se, more natural minor + 7.



Which is more or less the same thing as an altered scale with the natural 5th (C). If you omit the root of the I chord (Bb in this case)

The b5 of the V7 is the 'odd note' out of the altered scale because it is the only one that doesn't belong to any of the diatonic minor options. However that specific note - a half step above the tonic of the key is VERY common in older Western music, associated with the so called Neapolitan chord (bII). You very often hear, for instance b2-1-7-1 in the key. It's all over Bach, and I think there's a lot of Bach in minor bop language, but it's applied more loosely over the chords.

So I think that melodic cadence ended up getting used in jazz over dominant chords, often as b2-7-1. That's my theory.

All things being told - after transcribing a fair bit of this music, it increasingly seems the altered scale probably started as a combination of a few common devices - the dim tetrachord (ie 1-b2-#2-3), the tritone sub, the b2-7-1 melodic cadence, the augmented triad and the minor up a half step sub. It does a pretty good job of assimilating all those things, but I don't think it exists quite as a melodic scale. More of a theoretical device than something like harmonic minor* or whole tone scales where you can find obvious examples everywhere.

*although as I said elsewhere I feel the modern concept of harmonic, melodic and natural minor as separate things may not be awfully helpful.

[Christian Miller]

So, for example, I'm persuaded that there's One Big Minor scale for soloing. It has R 2 b3 4 5 and then you pick a 6th (non, flatted or natural, or both) and the same for b7, 7, none or both.

Me too, and if you look at the Wes example, you replace the 1 with a 7 and you get Reg's proto-altered scale, if you remember that.
G Ab Bb B D Eb F on G7 for example

works great for the blues scale as well...

You use your ears to make the choices and they are inherently dependent on harmonic context.

Melodic context too. Don't be a slave to the chords. Cats play b7 on V7 all the time.

If you choose to, you can label the four combinations of 6s and 7s as dorian, natural, harmonic and melodic minor. If that's helpful to you. But, One Big Minor may be easier.

And then, the logical extreme of this argument is that there's only the chromatic scale and your ears. Which puts the student back at the beginning.

I think this Big minor scale is a useful concept, but ultimately IMO the best thing to do is to work with musical material beyond scales.

Whereas telling people that they can play anything from the chromatic scale is no help at all.

And of course there are many bop lines that use all of the One Big Scale (and apply to various II-V's). Go to the head of Groovin' High for a masterclass on that for example. I'd be tempted to call it the Dizzy minor scale.

And, it occurs to me that if you "minorize everything" like Pat Martino, you only need to know One Big scale.

Yes -this is what I've been trying to say all this time. If you have strong minor key ideas you can apply them as you would the melodic minor scale. And it's better to think melodic line than scale.

[Tal_175]

I believe that Gary Burton said he thinks of the altered scale to having an additional natural 5th.

It seems like he stuck to the standard version of the altered scale in his formal teaching. Maybe he had a looser way of thinking about it in his own playing?

Again I'd like to draw attention to what Wes plays over the F7(9) chord going into bar 13. (Also on the implied Eb7(b9) in bar 6.) The use of the leading tone as a an added note rather than a substitution for the natural seventh is quite striking to me. It's not harmonic minor per se, more natural minor + 7.

I don't see the leading note of Bbminor in bar 13 (or 14)?

[PMB]

Me too, and if you look at the Wes example, you replace the 1 with a 7 and you get Reg's proto-altered scale, if you remember that.
G Ab Bb B D Eb F on G7 for example

works great for the blues scale as well...

It's also the 3rd mode of the harmonic major scale.

[Christian Miller]

It seems like he stuck to the standard version of the altered scale in his formal teaching. Maybe he had a looser way of thinking about it in his own playing?



I don't see the leading note of Bbminor in bar 13 (or 14)?

It’s in the pickup to 13, I coloured it red


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Christian Miller]

It's also the 3rd mode of the harmonic major scale.

It makes sense that it would be. I suppose could view this all as Eb maj6-dim.

Which is interesting, but I’m not sure how relevant it is from a playing POV.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tal_175]

It’s in the pickup to 13, I coloured it red

To me that's firmly in the category of melodic embellishment (upper mordent?) of the note Ab. The note Ab on the beat 4, A natural on the upbeat, and back to Ab on the beat 1. I would not hear this as leading note but as embellishment. To me, leading note is an emphasized note with a strong pull towards the tonic. The leading note doesn't even occur once during the entirety of ii-V bars. Note if the first beat of the bar 13 was a Bb instead of an Ab, I'd still hear that as a chromatic passing note, not as a leading note, especially given that it's not even leading to the tonic in its harmonic placement.

[Christian Miller]

To me that's firmly in the category of melodic embellishment (upper mordent?) of the note Ab. The note Ab on the beat 4, A natural on the upbeat, and back to Ab on the beat 1. I would not hear this as leading note but as embellishment. To me, leading note is an emphasized note with a strong pull towards the tonic. The leading note doesn't even occur once during the entirety of ii-V bars. Note if the first beat of the bar 13 was a Bb instead of an Ab, I'd still hear that as a chromatic passing note, not as a leading note, especially given that it's not even leading to the tonic in its harmonic placement.

In jazz that upward resolving role of the leading note is relaxed. This has been true since the early days.

But ok, if you hear it what way, I’ve got to ask - why then an upper A and not a Bb? All the other notes are diatonic to Bb natural minor aside from that last major 6

When I first transcribed that line I heard it as Bb, and only realised when I was checking my work that it wasn’t a simple natural minor scale.

If you look at the earlier phrase in bar 6, it’s a similar procedure.

Adding the natural 7th to a natural minor or minor pentatonic scale does seem to be quite a common move. I’ll report more examples as and when I find them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tal_175]

In jazz that upward resolving role of the leading note is relaxed. This has been true since the early days.

That has not been my experience with jazz. In jazz, I am used to hearing the use of the leading note in far, far less subdued ways than only once as a passing note in pickup into 2 bars before the arrival of the tonic chord.

But ok, if you hear it what way, I’ve got to ask - why then an upper A and not a Bb? All the other notes are diatonic to Bb natural minor aside from that last major 6

Upper A and Bb are both common embellishment options. That's just how note embellishments are played for centuries. I don't think there is a deep harmonic difference in the choices as the effect in anything other than extremely slow tempos would be very subtle and mostly melodic. It's easy to find far more obvious uses of leading tone in solos in minor contexts. It doesn't seem to me that the excerpt is an unambiguous example of this or is representative of the broader use of the leading note.

[Christian Miller]

That has not been my experience with jazz. In jazz, I am used to hearing the use of the leading note in far, far less subdued ways than only once as a passing note in pickup into 2 bars before the arrival of the tonic chord.

Upper A and Bb are both common embellishment options. That's just how note embellishments are played for centuries. I don't think there is a deep harmonic difference in the choices as the effect in anything other than extremely slow tempos would be very subtle and mostly melodic. It's easy to find far more obvious uses of leading tone in solos in minor contexts. It doesn't seem to me that the excerpt is an unambiguous example of this or is representative of the broader use of the leading note.

Upper chromatic embellishments are usually diatonic. Not always but usually.

So why the A? Impossible to know of course.

But it is a very common thing to do on a dominant chord. Again, Wes does the same thing a few bars earlier.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tal_175]

Upper chromatic embellishments are usually diatonic. Not always but usually.

So why the A? Impossible to know of course.

But it is a very common thing to do on a dominant chord. Again, Wes does the same thing a few bars earlier.

I think it is very common to find that in minor keys (or minor contexts), that the line played over the dominant has exactly one accidental and that's the leading note. I was just looking at a bunch of transcriptions. That, in fact, appears to be more common than anything else. In terms of when and how that leading note is played is all over the map. It's just part of the phrasal expression of the player but it's quite often that the note is on a strong beat of the bar. It is my understanding that this notion, the use of the accidental (raised 7th of the natural minor) in dominant contexts in minor keys is what lead music theorists to conceptualize the harmonic minor scale.

Perhaps, (modern) jazz improvisors approach this differently than the composers of the American songbook tunes did. It's possible that early jazz musicians were closer in their melodic approach to composers than the later improvisors. That might be more like what you refer to as natural minor + leading note (the accidental view).

The modern approach (a way of practicing that, say, Gary Burton would encourage) is to isolate the common note choices used in different harmonic contexts as chord-scales, and get good at coming up with good lines using these notes all over your instrument over these chords. Some do this by using common phrase building techniques therefore rely on their own compositional instincts, others rely on licks. Once you can do that for all common chord types using their corresponding scales, then you work on building lines that connect them. Someone who studied at Berklee once described this approach as "Get good at this chord, get good at that chord.". The harmonic minor view (Phrygian dominant with the added #9) is more essential to this approach, I think.

[Christian Miller]

I think it is very common to find that in minor keys (or minor contexts), that the line played over the dominant has exactly one accidental and that's the leading note. I was just looking at a bunch of transcriptions. That, in fact, appears to be more common than anything else. In terms of when and how that leading note is played is all over the map. It's just part of the phrasal expression of the player but it's quite often that the note is on a strong beat of the bar. It is my understanding that this notion, the use of the accidental (raised 7th of the natural minor) in dominant contexts in minor keys is what lead music theorists to conceptualize the harmonic minor scale.

Yeah, basically. The reality of the history is messier. AFAIK concepts like dominant and harmonic minor are all products of the 19th century theorists, so the Old Masters would have been thinking about this a bit differently.

But of course many jazz players would have known what those concepts were, such as Coleman Hawkins who was formally (ie classically) trained. But then the Hawk said 'I don't play chords, I play movement.' And you don't need to know what a harmonic minor is to hear the leading tone in a minor key. Django shows that.

Perhaps, (modern) jazz improvisors approach this differently than the composers of the American songbook tunes did. It's possible that early jazz musicians were closer in their melodic approach to composers than the later improvisors. That might be more like what you refer to as natural minor + leading note (the accidental view).

I don't see the GASB as having massive amounts to do with jazz - some composers use more blue and jazz touches than others - but many of the big hitters such as Kern. Porter and Rogers were trained very straight classical. The art of the songwriter is of course in coming up with a melody that sets the words, and the harmony and piano arrangement that goes along with that is part of the setting of the song.

Jazz improvisation is of course a different process - the art of variations on the melody and chords of an existing composition, more often than not. (Ornette was the first one to move away from that formal constraint)

I can't comment so much on what was going on in jazz players' heads, but I gather a lot of the horn players - Getz, Pepper, Chet etc - were very melodic oriented. So I suspect it's a blocked approach to harmony. You look at a tune like Softly and you think, Cm for the A section, and then Eb for the B section winding back to Cm, for instance. The raised seventh on the Cm and so on is part of that world. And - crucially - you are often using the melody as the basis for the solo. So there's Lee Konitz's system for doing that for instance. If you are too caught up in the harmony it's harder to focus on the melody. So maybe in the middle somewhere? You still have to play the A section for the right number of bars.

The ‘song as Raga’ as Conrad Cork put it. Certainly fits those more Presidential (shall we say) horn players.

And then there's the way Barry teaches which is explicitly to not get too hung up on the harmonic minor, but instead focus on the use of the dominant scale related to the II-7b5 into the third of the V7 chord. Bebop is generally considered to be a more harmonically descriptive style, but it still deals in this more blocked down style of harmony.

But then it was a much more diverse time than today in people's approaches. People mostly had to work it out themselves. For me that really comes into its own in the 60s when people started playing these less functional tunes, and they have these different approaches (compared to the 50s where it's 90% bleeding chunks of Bird on II-Vs.) For an obvious example there's Kind of Blue. It's interesting what they play on the 7#9's in All Blues for example - worth checking out. (These days I suspect hit would be more uniform.)

A common theme to all of this is jazz is layered. The rhythms and harmony are co-created by different people and interact in ways that aren't always predictable. This is quite unique to the jazz way of doing it. Because of that I find it more helpful to view what each part is doing in isolation before seeing the way they relate to each other. For example, Bird is outlining the Dm7, Dbm7, Cm7, the piano is playing Bb G7 Cm. What Steve Coleman calls 'invisible pathways,'

That sort of thing. I don't think modern CST really reflects that.

The modern approach (a way of practicing that, say, Gary Burton would encourage) is to isolate the common note choices used in different harmonic contexts as chord-scales, and get good at coming up with good lines using these notes all over your instrument over these chords. Some do this by using common phrase building techniques therefore rely on their own compositional instincts, others rely on licks. Once you can do that for all common chord types using their corresponding scales, then you work on building lines that connect them. Someone who studied at Berklee once described this approach as "Get good at this chord, get good at that chord.". The harmonic minor view (Phrygian dominant with the added #9) is more essential to this approach, I think.

There you go. It means those players approach things and sound a certain way. Harmony and improvisation become synonymous.

Jazz history becomes filtered through the lens of harmonic development, something Cork terms ‘Harmony as the Engine.’ Which leads to Levine saying daft things in his book.

[Reg]

Yea lots of ways or approaches to make note choices and musically organize those choices. They generally will all work... especially if you’re an experienced player etc.

What generally creates problems... is when one mixes up different concepts of musically organizing note choices without having an analysis that will musically organize how note choices work or function together within the "Tune".

[Reg]

I guess "problems" is a loose term. I'm coming from a performance reference... performing with other musicians.

It can also be fun to be in that free, (loose) moments where your following and guessing where other players are going or coming from when performing. LOL

[emanresu]

We got heavy bias from diatonic - every music that comes out of any speaker is diatonic mostly.
Alt is so cool but it needs some force to make it happen. Mental resolve!

[Strat-itis]

Of all the players whose transcriptions I analyzed, none of them consistently played altered lines that cleanly fell into the category of any of the chord-scales of altered dominant chords. The commonly referenced scales are, 7th mode of MM (super Locrian), 5th mode of HM (Phrygian dominant), the whole tone scale, the tritone dominant and the diminished scale. I am not only talking about very traditional players.

Are you saying you don't hear players use any of those? Monk uses diminished and whole tone. Bird uses mix flat 6. Altered/diminished-whole tone/super locrian I guess I agree I don't really hear that, it's more of a modern construct. The most common altered scale I see would have to be diminished, Milt uses it also. The Christian example of Wes using natural minor with the root moved to the leading tone was pretty cool.

It seems to me like good players don't hear and think the altered dominant as a strict scale but they freely use altered and unaltered notes within a line.

I agree. Jazz ed strikes again.

[Christian Miller]

We got heavy bias from diatonic - every music that comes out of any speaker is diatonic mostly.
Alt is so cool but it needs some force to make it happen. Mental resolve!

Start with one note


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Christian Miller]

Monk uses diminished and whole tone.

Heya - do you have a specific example in mind of Monk using the diminished scale?

[MiniMerckx.22]

I have a very strong feeling that many players when playing over altered chords or altering a chord by choice, think more along the lines of a fully chromatic pallet of notes to choose from rather than "switching scales" mid line.