In Praise Of The Major Scale

[Rob MacKillop]

Where would we be without it? There are many interesting scales in jazz, some with very exotic-sounding names, and with various levels of mystique attached. All scales are worthy of our consideration. Yet I keep returning to the so-called simple Major scale as an incredibly rich resource for improvisation and composition.

I've had students call it boring. If you are in agreement with them, play a Major scale one semitone above a V7 chord. If that's still boring, I can't help you. And let's just briefly mention seven distinct and beautiful modes, beautiful chords, quartal harmonies - they're all there. "So What" you might say

I once directed a student jazz band, with many wind instruments, keyboard, and three guitarists. The guitarists were the only ones who did not know the major scale. One of them knew "bits of it". I told all three to go away and not come back until they knew the major scale in five positions. I never saw them again. I should mention that these were not music students, but still...the major scale!

Let's hear it for the Magnificent Major Scale!

[jckoto3]

Hear, hear! Long live the Major scale!

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

I was in junior-high band. The teacher was a drummer who was only interested in handing out music for us to learn to perform for concerts.

One day, the high-school music teacher and head of the district's musical-education program visited, and asked us to play the C-major scale. We had no idea what he meant.

Immediately, he took the teacher into a sound-proofed room (into which we could see) in which he visibly dressed-down the teacher.

[bobby d]

It certainly has it's place but it's the first scale most of us learned. The problem is it can become the the default scale while improvising when maybe the Lydian (or something else) would sound better. Playing the major scale has become automatic for me because I've practiced it so much (for so long). Love it/hate it

We can look at other scales as being the Major scale altered by one or more notes, which can be useful in music theory.

[Rob MacKillop]

I don't think it is the first scale MOST of us learn on the guitar. That honour would surely go to the pentatonic minor? No matter - the point is that, even if it was the first scale we learned, we probably learned it at a time when we didn't know what to do with it. Worth a revisit, I'd say. And for all those who come here looking for the magic formula in how to play jazz, they might overlook the major scale, thinking it is of no use. They'd be wrong. In itself it is not the magic formula, but if you know how to use it well, it can be a great resource. And, as bobby d says, it can be used to source other scales.

[MarkRhodes]

Hear, hear! The older I get, the more I love the major scale.

Jimmy Bruno is also a big fan---I remember seeing a (teaching) video of his in which he said he got most of what he used from the major scale. (Yes, I know he knows other scales too.)

Carol Kaye's teaching begins with "chordal scale" triads (in F: F major, G minor, A minor, Bb major, C7, D minor, and Eminor7b5.) Basic stuff that is far richer than it seems at first blush.

Joe Pass taught that there are only three sounds in improvising: major, minor, and dominant 7. (When diminished and augmented chords occur, they are functioning in one of those three ways.) That's major-scale thinking. (And yes, I know he knew other scales too.)

The major scale is the bedrock of music. (Just not rock music! ;o)

I can't speak for others, but the first scale I learned was the minor pentatonic. (I think that was the norm for blues / rock guitar players and that's where I started out.) I think it was pretty much all I played for years!

So yes, put me down as a devotee of the major scale.

[Rob MacKillop]

Nice one, Mark!

[bobby d]

Good point Rob. I started on accordian and pentatonic scales were unheard of back then for that instrument. We started singing do re mi in grade school which is the major scale.

But first guitar lessons were the pentatonic minor. When my guitar teacher introduced the major scale nearly 50 years ago I thought wth I want to play rock n roll not the stuff I played on the accordian!

[Rob MacKillop]

Haha. Funny, bobby.

[jazzuki]

A1+ Rob and Mark

[monk]

I first learned to sing the major scale in solfege in the first grade. The teacher had us singing that daily for weeks. Presumably until we had all started to sing in the same key. Then it was off to itsy bitsy spiders and anthropomorphic teapots.

It was also the first scale I learned to play on the guitar.

[Rob MacKillop]

Did your teacher have you sing it a semitone above a V7? Now, that would be something!

[losaltosjoe]

Hi Rob,


I've been working with Robert Conti's "Jazz Lines" Book/DVD and he also is a big fan of the Major scale. He says something to the effect "If you want to create tension notes over any altered V7 (e.g., G7), simply play the shape of a maj7th form, one half step up from the V7 (e.g., Abmaj7). The notes of the Abmaj7 will perfectly state the altered extensions of the G7."


As someone with very little formal music theory training, I find this "trick" very helpful.


Joe

[MarkRhodes]

Hi Rob,


I've been working with Robert Conti's "Jazz Lines" Book/DVD and he also is a big fan of the Major scale. He says something to the effect "If you want to create tension notes over any altered V7 (e.g., G7), simply play the shape of a maj7th form, one half step up from the V7 (e.g., Abmaj7). The notes of the Abmaj7 will perfectly state the altered extensions of the G7."


As someone with very little formal music theory training, I find this "trick" very helpful.


Joe

Hey, Joe ('where you going with that gun in your hand?'---bet you've heard that one before....) i have Conti's "Jazz Lines" too and I know the section you're talking about. This is a great example of something Rob alluded to earlier, namely, that one can get keep the major scale as a basic reference instead of thinking in terms of other scales. Thus, 'play Ab major over G7 to highlight the altered tones.'

Carol Kaye says something that some people here find bizarre but I have come to find useful: "always think of a minor chord (-wherever it is in a progression) as a ii chord." For example, if you're playing "Summertime" in A minor, she thinks of that chord as the ii of G major (-when she's soloing over it.) It's part of her 'use the chordal scale as a slide rule' approach.

[Rob MacKillop]

Nothing wrong with this approach. Older players would also talk about playing the melodic minor (ascending) a semitone higher than a V7. Superlocrian is the fancy name we use these days. Les Wise's book, Jazz Improvisation For Guitar, takes this approach:

Dm7 / G7 / C / C

1. C Major Scale / Ab Major Scale (or chord tones) / C Major Scale

2. C Major Scale / Ab melodic minor scale / C Major Scale

3. C Major Scale / A harmonic minor and-or C harmonic minor / C Major scale

For minor ii / V / i simply play a Major ii / V / I up a minor 3rd, e.g.

B-7b5 / E7b9 / Am7

play

Dm7 / G7alt / C Maj7

We've moved beyond our heroic Major scale, but the point is that simple things can outline complex things. I'm all for the KISS approach.

[MarkRhodes]

Nothing wrong with this approach. Older players would also talk about playing the melodic minor (ascending) a semitone higher than a V7. Superlocrian is the fancy name we use these days. Les Wise's book, Jazz Improvisation For Guitar, takes this approach.....

I have that book on my music stand. I'm in the early part, using Ab major (chord tones) over the G7 in a ii-V-I to bring out the altered tones. Les Wise does something else in that book that Carol Kaye also talks about, moving the same line up 3 frets. That's a handy thing to know how (and when) to do, and although it might be thought of as something other than 'just the major scale' it is clear that the major scale is what underlies such movements.

[GaryCorby]

I'm all for the KISS approach.

A terrific band. But, the makeup and the tongues...would it work with jazz?

[Vladan]

For a while, when I was about 12 - 13, one famous classical guitar player of ours, Jovan Jovicic, held a beginners TV course in guitar.
The first scale he showed, and the only one, at least as long as I followed the course, and it was that first one episode (sorry),
was C major, starting on 3rd fret 5th string.

Prior to that event, we "all" knew to play that infamous "... serenade" on one string (I think it was also the piece this guy showed on TV,
as a goal, or something, but on "all strings"), riffs to Smoke on the water and Satisfaction, as well as couple opening bars from Stairway to Heaven.
After the event, knowing the names of notes, I deciphered melody of Ode to Joy from our primary school music class text book.

Than I started noodling with it and soon discovered if I omitted some notes, B and F in particular, I could "play" over most of the stuff
I listened to at the time, as long as I find suitable place on guitar to move my fingers in a shape.
I counted, there were 5 notes. So, the first time I heard about pentatonic, years after, I thought ***"it must be that thing I discovered back then". ***
All this before knowing a single chord. Not even C major.

Then I got a book. can not remember the name. School for Guitar, by someone..., guess what, after notes per string it moved to C major scale.
No mention of pentatonic.

Now, another one ... I learned my first chord. You'd never guess. It was F major, full bar, first fret. Lift a finger here, put it back,
or another there, ..., fret further, fret closer , ... it sounded bluesy to my ears, even more, it sounded very Chuck Berry,
for a good part of it. Still no mention of pentatonic.
Learned Boogie Woogie walking bass. All major.

I already played in a Punk band, or two, when one told me, "you should play pentatonic there". I said, after that thought *** passed through my brain,
"I already do, see, 1,2,3,4,5,..." He just laughed at me, told me I was an idiot, and showed me Amin pentatonic shape.
Of course, it was clear to me notes are all the same, and I already knew about relative minor, I IV V, even i iv V, but since I never ever heard about pentatonic
scale before, I never gave it a thought, it just was the thing that fit over everything, it never occurred to me there could be (C) major of that thing and
(A) minor of it.

That was more than 5 years after I learned C major on guitar, from TV.

[Rob MacKillop]

Good story, Vladan. We all have different experiences, which is a good thing.

[Jonah]

Hey,

I always swithc on this to show what one can do with major scale)))

My teacher did a good a favour for me long ago with this piece of music, he showed me that major/minor are not linear scales, but that they represent the harmony which is behind it. If we can hear it makes all the fun

[goldenwave77]

Take the major scale...listen to a lot of country which uses the 2 sliding into the 3 sound a lot...guess what-- the flat 3 is an available note ...vary the phrasing and attack to increase/decrease the tension.

Take the note between the 5 and 6, used in a lot of ragtime music....look at "The Entertainer" sheet music...this can be used to smooth out a lot of stuff rhythmically...Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton always said that ragtime need not/should not be played too fast....I'm convinced that Charlie Parker was steeped in this stuff when he grew up, and just absorbed it naturally.

Then listen to just about any blues, and listen for the sharp 4...add them together, the result is an expanded major scale: 1; 2; flat 3; natural 3; 4; sharp 4; 5; sharp 5;6; and 7.

Given this note collection, this is pretty powerful ammunition when faced with any major 2-5-1...(I realize this is pretty close to a full, chromatic scale....but I'm struck in listening to Charlie Christian how close a lot of his stuff is to western swing, or country in origin, though not to his final delivery which is all his own....I'm also getting ready to learn some lap steel for western swing sounds, so that vocal, chromatic-ized sound of a steel guitar just strikes me as being not very far away from what a lot of people think as jazz sounds....though many would put country/jazz at opposite ends of the musical spectrum...I don't ....and I think this is how the music actually developed...historically....remember that Charlie Christian came out of Oklahoma and was laughed at by Bennie G. when he arrived wearing a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots----the irony was that he was a lot hipper than they were....also remember that Chuck Berry passed himself off as a white country singer (at least on his advt. posters) and was almost bounced out of Chess Records as not being bluesy enough--at least if the stuff shown in the movie "Cadillac Records" is accurate.

[MarkRhodes]

...but I'm struck in listening to Charlie Christian how close a lot of his stuff is to western swing, or country in origin, though not to his final delivery which is all his own....I'm also getting ready to learn some lap steel for western swing sounds, so that vocal, chromatic-ized sound of a steel guitar just strikes me as being not very far away from what a lot of people think as jazz sounds....

There's a bio of Charlie Christian by Wayne Goins that covers several Western Swing players Charlie heard / crossed paths with in Oklahoma City and throughout the Southwest. (Thanks to our own Monk for recommending that book to me.) I love his playing and I love Western Swing too.


A Biography of Charlie Christian, Jazz Guitar?s King of Swing

[GuyBoden]

To my ears, everything is related to the Major scale and it's modes.

Melodic Minor is a Major Scale with a flat third.

Harmonic Minor is a Major Scale with a flat third and flat sixth.

Harmonic Major is a Major Scale with a flat sixth.