Which Songs For Major Scale Practise?

[mascis2000]

I'm looking for jazz songs that I can practise my major scale improvisations with.

There seems to be a lack of jazz songs that are in purely a major key, lots with ii-v-i's that are in overall major harmony but that's not what I want, I'd like to stay away from anything where I find myself wanting to think of any modes like dorian etc..

The only one I've really been able to think of is Mack The Knife and even that drifts into more of a modal feel on the ii and v chords. Maybe some songs that are based around a i-vi-ii-v sequence? But I can't really think of any...

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any responses

[ragman1]

Interesting no one has replied. They might be tempted to suggest Kumbaya!

Try ATTYA.

Any tune can be reduced to major scales if you know what you're doing. Minors can be played with their relative majors and backdoors and tritones restored to their originals.

Here's 'Stella By Starlight' played only with major scales as above.

[KirkP]

Blue Moon is pretty much all diatonic except the last four measures of the bridge.

That makes it a pretty boring song to improvise over, but it would be good practice for major scale. You could keep playing the I-vi-ii-V cycle through bars 5&6 instead of the chromatic dominants to keep it diatonic. And you could just lay out or play chords over the four measures in the bridge where the major scale won’t work.

[Rob MacKillop]

So What by Miles Davis. 16 bars of C Major, 8 bars of Db Major, 8 bars of C Major. Simple.

[ragman1]

So What by Miles Davis. 16 bars of C Major, 8 bars of Db Major, 8 bars of C Major. Simple.

Actually not so simple to do that many bars of one scale and make it interesting! In fact, it's difficult.

The players on the MD version don't just use the major (dorian), they use aeolian, phrygian, melodic minor, and a bit of blues as well. That could be covered by changing certain notes of the major but you'd have to know which ones.

I just posted this on another thread but it bears repetition if the OP can find his way round the music.

[Rob MacKillop]

Well, I know that, Ragman. You can play completely chromatically if want to. I meant simple in that two major scales COULD be used, which I thought was in line with the OP.

[Drumbler]

Take a 1-6-2-5 and practice over that.

C-Am-Dm-G7

[ragman1]

Well, I know that, Ragman. You can play completely chromatically if want to. I meant simple in that two major scales COULD be used, which I thought was in line with the OP.

I was going to put that in too but I thought telling the OP he could use any note might give him a nervous breakdown :-)

[ragman1]

We don't know how advanced the OP is with his major scales. Is he just starting or can he swap from one to the other with some ease?

[T1mothy]

Parisian Thoroughfare!

[guitarbuddy]

Dearly Beloved. It starts with 14 bars in C major, going up to Db major for the last two measures of of the first half of the song. In the next section of the song, basically starting out as a repeat of the first section, it's C major for 10 measures, then a D7 chord for 2 measures, so use a G major scale (D mixolydian), then back to C major for the last four measures.

[ragman1]

14 bars of the same major scale is not what I'd give to a beginner wanting to practice his major scales. He's going to get bored and run out of ideas. It's too much.

Obviously ATTYA (at a workable speed) is the tune to give the major scales a good workout. Especially when it's also transposed into other keys for practice's sake.

Or even Autumn Leaves if he wants to practice the major and harmonic minor together. Probably a better idea.

[ragman1]

Take a 1-6-2-5 and practice over that.

C-Am-Dm-G7

I'd go with that too. The actual tunes aren't important for practice, the chord progressions are. So he could record his own backings of 6251 in different keys and go round them. Ascending fourths is good.

Am7 - Dm7 - G7 - CM7
Dm7 - Gm7 - C7 - FM7
Gm7 - Cm7 - F7 - BbM7

etc etc. It's good, if testing, because one minor chord is repeated each time but needs a different treatment.

But, like I say, we don't know where this guy is with his scales at the moment.

[Pycroft]

This may or may not be what you're looking for - it's made up entirely of maj7 chords moving in non-functional ways

[rintincop]

Parisian Thoroughfare (A section)
Pent Up House
Rhythm Changes
Samba de Orpheus

[Michael Neverisky]

If you think of a major scale as a collection of pitches, not necessarily in the linear do, re, mi arrangement, then a major scale pitch collection can be used over any changes. Jimmy Bruno often makes this point in his videos with some fine sounding lines as examples. Will it sound like bebop? No, but that's not the point.

[MarkRhodes]

If you think of a major scale as a collection of pitches, not necessarily in the linear do, re, mi arrangement, then a major scale pitch collection can be used over any changes. Jimmy Bruno often makes this point in his videos with some fine sounding lines as examples. Will it sound like bebop? No, but that's not the point.

You can see how Jimmy plays here. This duet with Frank Vignola is recent. What Jimmy is playing is right out of the "five fingerings" he assigns all his students.

[KirkP]

If the OP wants to practice over changes that stay solely in one diatonic key, another idea is to loop over several chords in a tune. For example, below I’ve set up iRealPro to loop over four measures of the A section of The Very Thought of You.

For practice one might start by playing the straight melody over that loop, but after a couple of loops one naturally starts varying things a little. After a few times through it becomes challenging to keep things interesting, so you’ll find yourself experimenting with repeated patterns starting on different notes in the scale or connecting the diatonic patterns with chromatic lines. And of course with iRealPro you can easily change keys, tempos, rhythms, or backing instruments which can keep the exercise more interesting.

It’s also useful to turn off the backing track and do the exercise unaccompanied or with a metronome.

[ragman1]

You can relax, the OP is a vanisher.

[Rsilver]

I suggest you reformulate the question as: what chords go with what scales, not with what songs. A scale for a chord includes its chord tones and its passing (in between) tones. So for instance the chord Dm7 could have the scale (chord tones capitalized) D e F g A b C D . The chord G7 could have (among others) the scale G a B c# D e F G. Etc.

It’s too limiting, in my opinion, to try to interpret a whole set of chord changes (as in a tune) with a single scale.

[rintincop]

Any song, except a strictly minor key song...

[christianm77]

I'm looking for jazz songs that I can practise my major scale improvisations with.

There seems to be a lack of jazz songs that are in purely a major key, lots with ii-v-i's that are in overall major harmony but that's not what I want, I'd like to stay away from anything where I find myself wanting to think of any modes like dorian etc..

The only one I've really been able to think of is Mack The Knife and even that drifts into more of a modal feel on the ii and v chords. Maybe some songs that are based around a i-vi-ii-v sequence? But I can't really think of any...

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any responses

Mack the Knife - a modal feel? That's a new one ;-) But I take to mean you don't want tunes that move to the ii/IV subdominant region, but stay squarely in I. That's tough. Blue Moon's A is the nearest thing I can think of. Most tunes go into subdom at some point.

Most jazz tunes have some element of chromatic harmony, however often this is not quite as important as you might think. For instance the example Blue Moon given above obvious has some chromatic chords in it. It may or may not be that important to express those chromatic chords in your melodic improvisations, especially if you keep them simple and use your ears.

I think jazz students often get the wrong end of the stick in thinking it is necessary to play the exact changes of a song. In fact, it is necessary to understand that a VI7 chord or a IV7, bIIIo7 or any of the other of the common chromatic chords in fact create movement within the key. You are at liberty to create that movement yourself - or leave it out.

One classic example of this is the blue notes...

An alternative point is if you can play the major scale well, you should be able to make it work on the IIm7/V7 chords without thinking of modes...

[christianm77]

If the OP wants to practice over changes that stay solely in one diatonic key, another idea is to loop over several chords in a tune. For example, below I’ve set up iRealPro to loop over four measures of the A section of The Very Thought of You.

For practice one might start by playing the straight melody over that loop, but after a couple of loops one naturally starts varying things a little. After a few times through it becomes challenging to keep things interesting, so you’ll find yourself experimenting with repeated patterns starting on different notes in the scale or connecting the diatonic patterns with chromatic lines. And of course with iRealPro you can easily change keys, tempos, rhythms, or backing instruments which can keep the exercise more interesting.

It’s also useful to turn off the backing track and do the exercise unaccompanied or with a metronome.

I think the original chords here literally had Ab major for 4 bars.

[mascis2000]

Thanks everyone, that's really helpful. Especially ChristianM77.

I think I was thinking too rigidly and wanted to find a song that is based entirely on Imaj7 Ionian chords. Kind of like So What is based on only IIm7 Dorian chords (even though other scales/chords obviously can and are used).

After playing around with some of the songs mentioned I'll adjust my practise to two main approaches;

1) Use either a static Imaj7 vamp or a VI-II-V-I when I want to really be aware and hear how the scale degrees are functioning in the harmony, ie 4 causing some tension etc..

2) Use a list of songs generated from this thread to practise major scales in a more practical way and accept that there will be passages where I will need to 'use my ears' and keep the melodies relatively simple when I get to passages with non diatonic chords.

This is a list of the songs I found most useful and enjoyable for this:

Blue Moon
Rhythm Changes (original)
Paisian Thoroughfare
Pent Up House
Samba De Orfeu

Thanks again everyone!

[christianm77]

Yeah, I think the lack of modal tunes that stay on Ionian/major is down to a couple of factors

1) it's a bit of familiar, vanilla sound
2) as students of George Russell and his writings would tell you the major scale has an inherent duality - the 4th degree sounds dissonant. So the most euphonious choice of mode for an isolated major chord is the lydian, not the ionian. Similarly, the b6 has the same issue for minor, so we tend towards dorian over aeolian.

Now that very thing that makes the major scale a less popular choice for modal jazz makes it better for functional progressions because that 4th can be used to create movement within the scale including V-I's, IV-I's and II-V-I's. Lydian just sits there.