Altered Major Scales for Secondary Dominant Chords

Some months ago I shared a table of non-diatonic tones and their common uses. This morning I found myself thinking once again about non-diatonic tones, and specifically about an effective way to practice them, one that could quickly translate to actual jazz improvisation.

The standard bebop scales came to mind. The insertion of one extra note into a scale–typically a raised fifth in a major scale, and a raised seventh in a dominant (Mixolydian) scale–does more than allow a soloist to move through a scale with ease and land on an octave. It also creates new harmonic possibilities. That principle can be exploited by inserting other tones that also suggest secondary harmonies.

Click on the image to your right to enlarge it. You’ll see three scales. The first two contain a single added note. Scale #1 includes a raised first, and scale #2, a raised fourth. The interpolation of these notes adapts a basic major scale for use with two commonly encountered secondary dominant chords: the V7/ii (or VI7) and the V7 of V (or II7). In the key of C, which these scales are written in, those chords are A7 and D7.

These scales are as fresh to me as they are to you at the time of this writing. Not that I’ve never played them before; I just haven’t made a conscious point of focusing on them as actual scales to invest my time in practicing. I see two benefits to doing do. The first is, obviously, developing technical facility. The second is raising one’s awareness of the added notes as harmonic devices, with an eye on the secondary chords that they apply to.

Each added note serves as the major third–a critical identifying tone–of its secondary dominant chord. So when you play scale #1, remember that it works readily with the VI7; and likewise, scale #2 pairs with the II7. Many playing situations feature both of those secondary dominants, and often the VI7 moves directly to the II7, which in turn moves to the V7–in essence, coasting around a segment of the cycle of fifths.

The third scale incorporates both the raised first and the raised fourth, making it a kind of granddaddy scale that accommodates both secondary dominants.

Now, don’t look at these scales as magic harmonic bullets.. Rather, look at them as resources that allow you to judiciously select certain tones when you need them as well as furnishing you with good linear resources. It’s not all about your fingers mastering the technique of the scales. It’s also very much about applying your mind to grasp the uses of the introduced tones.

In other words, build harmonic awareness, not just digital dexterity. To assist you, I’ve included an exercise for each scale that will help you hear how each added note implies a certain harmony. Play these exercises on the piano so you can chord along with the melody line, or else get a keyboard player or guitarist to comp for you while you play the different lines.

Have fun! And if you enjoyed this post, drop in on my Jazz page and check out the many other exercises, articles, and solo transcriptions.

Repeat Notes

Amid the fast flow of notes that so often characterizes a jazz solo, it’s good to add a little punctuation. Your listeners need it and so do you–a pause here, an accent there, something to break things up for the sake of creative interest. I probably should devote an entire article to the concept of space. In this post, however, I want to talk for a second about a more subtle form of musical punctuation: repeat notes.

I don’t know whether I’m using an actual technical term, but “repeat notes” is the handle I’m hanging on the concept I’m about to describe. It’s as simple a technique as you can imagine: you simply repeat a note in the midst of your flow of ideas. You may repeat it just once. You may repeat it several times for dramatic effect. You may choose to ghost the note or use an alternate fingering for effect. The point is, you’re momentarily bringing the jumble of tones to rest on a single pitch, and you’re working that pitch, spotlighting it, whether for a microsecond or for several bars.

Like many musical concepts, this one is easier to illustrate than to explain. So click on the image and take a look at the exercise I’ve included. It’ll give you a start on repeat notes. From there, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

By the way, the note heads with X’s are ghost notes. For whatever reason–probably because we’re talking about punctuating solos–it seemed appropriate to include a few of them in this exercise along with the repeat notes.

Using Sequence in Jazz Solos: Some Exercises

Howdy, campers. As promised, I’m back with a few exercises on sequences that you can actually wrap your fingers around.

Before you proceed further, please take a moment to read my introductory post on this topic, written a couple days ago.

And now, assuming that you’ve done as I requested and acquired a foundational grasp of what sequence is and why it’s such a handy tool for the jazz musician, here’s the first exercise. It illustrates the concept of diatonic sequence. The sequence happens to move up by thirds starting on the chord tones of a C major 7, but it could just as easily move up or down by seconds, or fourths, or up and down at random intervals.

Diatonic Sequence

You could use the same pattern over a C7 by changing the note B to a Bb. But my point isn’t to show you how to outline a chord. It’s to demonstrate how the use of diatonic sequence provides a sense of logic and cohesiveness which you can use to advantage in improvising a jazz solo.

Sequence does such a good job at “making sense” of an idea that you don’t even have to play in key to sound good. In fact, “wrong notes” can sound very cool when you play them as part of a sequence. The temporary harmonic clash creates color and interest.

Sequentially mirroring an idea exactly, interval for interval, is one way to quickly slip out of key, letting the weight of the sequence rather than harmonic agreement justify the use of individually questionable tones. In the following example, root movement descends by major thirds.

Notice that the idea resolves to a chord tone. It’s cool to take your listeners for a temporary excursion into outer space, but you generally want to bring them back to planet earth again with a healthy dose of consonance.

Exact Repetion

Again, the movement downward by major thirds is just one possibility.

You can add further interest by shifting the rhythm of a sequence. The following shows the same sequence as above, but the six-note pattern is now imposed on a 4/4 setting rather than 3/4. I’ve marked the separations between each group of notes in the sequence.

Exact Repetition with Syncopation

Note that I’ve used the sequence over a different chord, an F#+7(#9), another nice application for the augmented sound implied by the major third root movement.

Finally, here is a twelve-bar blues to illustrate the use of sequence in an actual jazz solo. The ideas may seem a bit forced, but they give you a feel for how both diatonic sequence and exact repetition might be applied in an improvisation.

sequenceblues

The above illustrations just touch on the myriad creative and highly personal ways that sequence can be used in jazz solos. To recap: sequence can help you organize musical material in a way that creates cohesiveness and momentum, and that gives “wrong notes” a powerful sense of rightness when you want to play outside the changes.

Like any other component of music, sequence needs to be used judiciously. The right amount adds spice; too much just sounds overdone and even boring. Listen to how the greats of jazz use sequence, work with it yourself, take risks, and let your ear be the judge. And need I say…have fun!