Is There a Jazz Scale?

[pcjazz]

That's what I do mostly...
On Autumn Leaves I use G major, but it sounds dull after a while...

Autumn Leaves alternates between major and relative minor — for example G major and E minor (although more commonly Bb major and G minor, but let your voice decide the key).

[fep]

Some find the concept of "don't use scales" confusing. Perhaps because most often the bits and pieces one plays fall into one scale or another. But the bit, the piece, the idea didn't come from thinking about a scale.

A simple example... play the first bit I notated on the image attached. When first learning guitar I picked that up, maybe from a friend, don't remember, but I picked that up as just a cool little thing to do over a C chord. For me that's all it is. Sure it is from a c major scale but I don't think of it that way. It's just a thing, a sound, that fits that chord grip.

Let's say that's one thing. 2nd bit I notated, another thing, also related to that grip, a bluesy thing perhaps.

So I learn a bunch of things, bits that I associate with chord grips, and things I associate with other chord grips, and all that becomes my "stuff" or vocabulary. All those bits and pieces (like words) get put together in different ways and that becomes my improvising tool box. The bits also can get twisted around and mutated creating more vocabulary. I'm usually visualizing an underlying chord grip, but that's just the way I've found works for me. But most of the time I'm not thinking of scales.

[SophieB]

Some find the concept of "don't use scales" confusing. Perhaps because most often the bits and pieces one plays fall into one scale or another. But the bit, the piece, the idea didn't come from thinking about a scale.

A simple example... play the first bit I notated on the image attached. When first learning guitar I picked that up, maybe from a friend, don't remember, but I picked that up as just a cool little thing to do over a C chord. For me that's all it is. Sure it is from a c major scale but I don't think of it that way. It's just a thing, a sound, that fits that chord grip.

Let's say that's one thing. 2nd bit I notated, another thing, also related to that grip, a bluesy thing perhaps.

So I learn a bunch of things, bits that I associate with chord grips, and things I associate with other chord grips, and all that becomes my "stuff" or vocabulary. All those bits and pieces (like words) get put together in different ways and that becomes my improvising tool box. The bits also can get twisted around and mutated creating more vocabulary. I'm usually visualizing an underlying chord grip, but that's just the way I've found works for me. But most of the time I'm not thinking of scales.

Thanks Fep, really helpful!

[SophieB]

Thanks for the help everyone!

I'm focusing now on trying to play what I sing in my head while improvising...
It's not always easy to play on the guitar, but it's getting better (slowly ).

[bobby d]

Isn't the melodic minor called the Jazz minor scale?

Start out with the 10 most important scales used in Jazz.

1st, learn and get to know the seven modes of the Major scale. The melodic minor also has a few modes that are used in Jazz including the Super Locrian mode and the Lydian with a flatted 7th. Then there's the symmetric diminished scale.

Find out what chords each of these scales work with and get used to the way each scale sounds. Also memorized the shape (intervals) of each scale. Don't just play them up and down; try different sequences, interval jumps etc.

There was video of John Scofield demonstrating all of this but it's not easy to find now days.

[Gabor]

Isn't the chromatic scale all 12 notes after each other? How can that help me improvise?

Good point. It is not helping, especially not for the beginner. But for defense that answer, it means, that in musical level any degree of any scale can be used theoretically. However the question remains, "how", because it matters if the improviser use a note as passing tone, or lands on it. It also matters if the improvizer uses a tone on offbeat or upbeat. Many things matter when the musician creates musical sentences from notes. And not mentioned here, but rythim important at least as notes (or even more) Listen George Benson when creates beautiful music only with one or two notes, but what a groove!

Back to the notes, so the question remeains, how? To wrap it up, focus on creating musical thoughts, instead focusing on scales.

Many good answers above, let me repeat a pragmatic one. Pick a tune, listen it dozen times a day, by different performers (youtube will do it), then pick a method from the link below and explore and practice it for a week. Then advance to the next. Then combine the learned methods If one of them does not seems to produce meaningfull result, simply skip it, you can return back later.

Also find a good teacher :-)

https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~keller/jazz/...roviseJazz.pdf