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Hi all,
I have two related questions. I have been playing for while now but I simply cannot integrate alerted sound into my playing. I am just not hearing it, it just sounds horrible, mainly down to me! I wanted to ask if anyone could recommend some specific examples of an altered scale being used in a solo I can learn? or even just a few phrase from famous solos, guitar sax, anything really.
Secondly are there any examples I can check out of a player superimposing a substitution without the band playing with them? For example someone playing a tritone in a blues while the rest of the band plays the standard progression? Again this is something I have tried and it sounded like a car crash and it got me dirty looks
I have tried various lessons but I frankly only really learn well from records as something out of context doesn't stick with me. I like to transcribe and it is possible i just have not attempted complex enough tunes yet to discover these sound so any examples would be much appreciated.
PS please move if this is not the best forum section.
Thanks in advance!
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02-10-2022 08:06 AM
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The forum lessons section has some altered dominant examples which might be useful.
The Altered Scale For Jazz Guitar (Scale Diagrams & Licks)
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The altered scale is a tricky sound to get in your ears; there’s a few ways you can go about it though. Here are some ideas:
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The note that’s hardest to hear for me in the altered scale is the b5. The other notes belong to the minor key, so on a G7 the notes belong to C natural/harmonic minor
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Specific examples; have a look at the heads of Night in Tunisia, Segment and - very much - Hot House.
It’s common to find parts of the altered scale being used more than the whole thing; the (3)-#9-b9-1 on V7 is incredibly common - take Green Dolphin Street.
Another common device is the minor triad; so on G7, Abm.
Its a moot point whether these little figures come from the altered scale or the tritone sub; in a sense they are basically the same thing… Db7#11 = G7 alt
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Actually I was just checking this Epiphone demo, the player employs altered scale in the blues context nicely. Check out G7 alt -> Cmin and F7 alt -> Bb7 (bars 8 and 10):
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I practice lines with altered scale thinking of the tritone (lydian) dominant and it's family of arpeggios.
So for A alt that would be:
Eb7 (root)
Gmin7b5 (third)
BbminMaj (fifth)
Dbaug (seventh)
(Also the triad versions) combined with the Bb Mel min scale.
I just work on different ways of going to the target chord with lines that combine these arpeggios with the Bb Mel Min scale.
This is very analogous to the family of four concept of Sherly Bailey (but also similarly to Barry Harris, George Benson etc concepts) but applied to the altered scale.
Tritone dominant has a half step motion to the target chord, so this view also makes it easier to see these lines as part of the tritone chord voicings.Last edited by Tal_175; 02-10-2022 at 11:35 AM.
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Babaluma -
There are two parts to this question, dominants and substitutions. There are a ton of examples of known players using both altered sounds and subs and it would take far too long to go through a million tunes for examples so I won't do that. But after this you'll be able to know the sound instantly when you hear it. That might be easier.
Also, I'm going to keep it all very, very simple. Always the best way to learn it.
There are two kinds of dominants, resolving and non-resolving. If you have a sequence like this:
Em7 - A7 - Dm7 - G7 - CM7
The A7 resolves to its I, Dm7, and the G7 resolves to its I, CM7. That's simple enough.
If you have a sequence like this:
Em7 - A7 - Am7 - D7 - Dm7 - G7 - CM7
You can see that the A7 does not resolve to its I, nor does the D7. Only the G7 resolves to its I, the CM7.
Basically the rule is only use the altered scale over resolving dominants. For non-resolving dominants use something else (we'll do it later).
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Now we use the melodic minor scale a half-step above the root of the resolving dominant to get the altered sound. So in that first sequence we'll use:
Em7 - A7alt (Bb mel m) - Dm7 - G7alt (Ab mel m) - CM7.
You have to know those scales, where to put your fingers, and then just go for it. If you do it often enough you'll find out how to resolve them. In fact, they pretty much take care of themselves, as you'll discover.
I've just done this and you can hear how it works. I've done it twice in different places on the guitar. It's honestly not difficult.
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Then there's the non-resolving dominants. If you use the altered sound over these ones you'll find it doesn't really work. What's more it's hard to resolve the sound properly. So this is how NOT to do it.
I suspect that you got the 'dirty looks' because you were using altered sounds in the wrong places!
The sequence is:
Em7 - A7 - Am7 - D7 - Dm7 - G7 - CM7
(The next three clips may not display because there's one already here so just click them)
Stream Wrong alt by ragman | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
So the thing to use over non-resolving dominants is what they call the Lydian Dominant scale. The simplest way to think of it is playing the ii melodic minor of the dominant. That is, for A7 use E mel m and for D7 use A mel m. The G7 is Ab mel m as before.
So you can see that the sequence now looks like this. And sounds like the clip.
Em7 - % - Am7 - % - Dm7 - G7 - CM7
Stream Lyd Dom by ragman | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
See the difference? And see how, when you do play the altered scale at the end, how it stands out?
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So then there are substitutions. Substitutions are a vast and complex subject. You'd need to study it. We all need to study it! But here's a simple sub trick you can use. It's not a bad introduction to subs.
If you take a Dm triad the notes are D F A. If you take the 3rd up from the D, which is F, and stack that in m3rds, you get F Ab C, which is F minor. Go up once more from the 3rd of Fm, which is Ab, and you get Ab B Eb.
You'll notice something interesting, that the last one is Abm which is the altered sound. But it's the one in the middle, the Fm, that can be used as a sub.
So now, instead of playing two lots of Em and Am in our sequence, we can play:
Em7 - Gm7 - Am7 - Cm7 - Dm7 - Abm - CM7.
The last one, again, is the altered sound because the G7 resolves. But the other two mean we're playing G mel m over the A7 and C mel m over the D7. These subs give a sort of b9 sound. They also include the 13th of the dominant so you have a 13b9 sound, which is a pretty modern sub.
Sounds like this. I've done it twice.
Stream A13b9_D13b9_G7alt by ragman | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
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That's about it. Keep it simple. Good luck
Last edited by ragman1; 02-10-2022 at 05:29 PM.
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If you cannot hear altered sound try to play altered dominant chords first and resolve them into tonic chords or its substitutions... I think it is the best way to hear how it sounds and works.
Once you hear it you probably find your way in melodic realization too
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Connecting chords together is the number one thing that a lot of players could spend more time with. Don’t just play a chord in isolation- join it up to the next one.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Who practices chords in isolation?
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^ I was actually thinking about this today. For instance, if I'm focusing on making a line, I might avoid chord transitions and have that be a weak point. Instead of doing that, I thought why not target the chord transitions with my right hand line and left hand chord transition. (I'm a keys player.)
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Ok good sir, I have a lesson and a clip.
Here's a lesson on putting a sub without changing the base harmony.
Here's an example of going crazy with the harmony in music. Cedar Walton the pianist on the tune Blue Monk. I was thinking about this the other day. In bar 3 and 4 of the bluez on his solo he basically goes hog wild and treats it as one big altered fest. I hear whole tone ideas running all the way into the 4 chord on bar 5. It sounds like he treats it as an excuse to run altered stuff all the way through bar 3-4 and well into the 4 chord on bar 5-6. I'll try to come up with some simpler examples in music.
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 02-11-2022 at 05:17 AM.
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Alright mofos this is altered central and you got the full score and ballad tempo to hear everything. Check altered/spicy notes on every kind of chord, not only the dominant chords.
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A lot of people. Number one problem I come across with students regarding changes playing. Originally Posted by Jonah
Perhaps more a matter of them going ‘Dm chord, play this scale, G7 chord play this scale, Cmaj7, play this scale’ and not linking the chords across the bar line.
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The bar line is basically poison
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Obviously if you literally divide each chord from the next and rigidly apply certain scales it'll sound like painting with numbers. But only very beginners would do that. At least at the start. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
But we have to know where the right sounds to use come from, so there is a point to scales. But any tune is a whole and should flow like a whole. But I'd say that comes much later with a lot more experience and an inborn flair for the music.
Not only that but one will also know when and how to deviate from the 'right notes' and create other sounds that work. But it's no use parading that sort of thing at the beginning. That would be trying to put an old head on young shoulders, etc, etc. Unless you're one of those prodigies.
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I know what you mean, but chords tend to change with the bar lines... so isn't it more or less the same thing? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Jens Larsen has a number of videos on YouTube about this. He's careful to always write out his examples.
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Many beginners do. They see a bunch of chord diagrams in a book and just play them without reading the parts of the book that explain how to use them. Doing this with Ted Greene's "Chord Chemistry" was something of a rite of passage in my day. Originally Posted by Jonah
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No Originally Posted by ragman1
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Try playing the notes of what I think is sort of the Cry Me a River lick a half-step up from your V7alt chord. For example, in Autumn Leaves, during the A-7b5 - D7#9 - Gm6 bit: over the D7#9, play this lick starting on the #9 of D, which is the 9 of Eb minor:
F Eb Bb Gb F Eb D C Bb
Play it over the major ii-V as well: during C-7 / F7 / BbM, over the F7, play the same lick starting on the #9 of F, which is Ab, and resolve to the 3rd of Bb.
There's no b5, but this lick helped me get the altered sound into my playing after chasing it for while.
Donna Lee head has some bits that I think are derived from the tritone / altered sound as well. I'm learning that you don't need to play things derived from the altered scale over the entire V7 chord bar. Just a note or two at the end of the bar resolving to a chord tone of the tonic "counts" as altered as well.Last edited by wzpgsr; 02-11-2022 at 12:24 PM.
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Why not? We play to a musical background, not bar lines on a lead sheet (I'm obviously not talking about sight-reading or using the score as a reference). Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I mean, if I know it's going
Am - D7 - (Dm7 - G7)
I'd be tempted to play Am twice as one phrase regardless of any bar lines. But I'd be forced to change to something else at the Dm (which doesn't mean I wouldn't start before or after the actual beat) but the harmony still changes where the bar line is so I don't see much difference.
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^ I think it's not the worst thing that can happen if one's ideas are separated by the division of the chords some of the time. However, I don't think you can be doing that all the time. It's pretty necessary, and sounds good to be able to have lines flow over chord transitions/bar lines. It's something I started specifically practicing. Run the chord scales and don't interrupt anything at chord changes, simply transition to the new scale regardless of what scale degree you're on.
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You do whatever you want if you have control over what you are doing. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
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