Jazz Greats Use THIS Instead of the Altered Scale

The Altered Scale can be really hard to use during your improvised solos, but many musicians want to get that sound into their playing. Luckily, we can learn from the jazz greats like Cannonball Adderley, Dexter Gordon and the modern genius Patrick Bartley to see how they get the altered sound into their solos, without relying on an awkward scale!

0:45 The Altered Scale
2:33 Cannonball Adderley
4:10 Dexter Gordon
5:04 Patrick Bartley
6:25 Why does this trick work?
8:21 Why is the trick useful?

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[Bobbias]

I'm a simple man, I see Pat, I click.

[dbz-otbr]

Heavy concepts simplified and the theoretical explanation. Great job. For those of us who didn’t go to music school, this stuff is gold. Stuff you can put to work on the gig (practice first!) right away. THANK YOU.

[MechanicalRabbits]

As a guitarist, this sounds super helpful! can't wait to try it out

[Maximus_sage]

Short version: play the minor chord a semitone up from the root note when on a dominant chord

[hahabass]

'Later-life (old) bass player here, who has struggled with jazz harmony for nearly 30 years. The light just came in and I'm delightfully blinded by it! This is a brilliantly illuminating post. Grateful! 🙏🏽

[AmberD]

Excellent! As someone who teaches, there is not enough educational content out there like this. It's inspiring to see! Oftentimes advanced topics are taught in overly and overtly complex (even convoluted) ways, when concepts like this can be distilled more simply without losing anything in the process.

[gilsonamaral]

You could also just thinking of it as the tritone of the 2 in a 251. For instance a 251 in C, would be D-|G7, the tritone of that would be Ab-|Db7. So over the G7 you could use either Ab- which is what the video is talking about or you could think of Db7 it ultimately creates the same effect.

[davewillmusic]

Wow, this man earned the hell out of this like a subscribe. You put your heart and soul into this art for years and it shows!

[duaneharlick]

Long ago I picked up a similar cheat code from guitarist Emily Remmler. She used the Major scale of the raised 5th in her turnarounds. So against a II-V-I in G, for example, she would pass through Eb Major against the V chord. Both Eb minor and Eb major work well here, as both F# (minor 3rd of Eb) and G (major 3rd of Eb) fall within the dominant scale of G. Very cool stuff.

[michaeldmytriw]

YES!!! That was enormously helpful. This reminds me of how it finally dawned on me that playing a minor pentatonic scale two steps above a major 7th chord captures a lot of the fun extensions. Subscribed!

[leighwakeham]

Clear and concise as ever, even I (sort of) understood it.

[stevenuttley]

I suspect the altered scale was 'invented' at Berklee or somewhere similar (like the so-called 'be-bop scale'). It's certainly a scale and it contains all the possible alterations but I doubt many musicians actually thought of it that way. In fact until about 1955 I doubt they thought much in terms of scales at all. I've read quite a few biographies of the bop pioneers and they seemed to visualize mainly in chordal terms.

[mbmillermo]

Great idea! Another way to think about it is in terms of tritone substitution -- if the chord is G7 alt, then D♭9 (chord, arpeggio, etc.) will sound great, or you could do a ii-V7 with that, which would be A♭m7-D♭9. The only note that is different between A♭ Dorian and G altered is the G♭ replacing the G natural. That G♭ plays an interesting role -- it would be the 4th of D♭ Mixolydian, so a note that is typically not held long when playing over D♭7, and as the enharmonic equivalent of the major 7th of G, it would be used in the G dominant bebop scale, also not a strong note there.

[McGillMusicSaxSchool]

Really interesting explanation here Josh and I like how thinking in this way makes it really easy to get these interesting sounds in your solos. Cool!

[truejohnsolo]

amazing. I've been learning this recently and been watching videos on this very topic and yours is a very clear reinforcement. It's such a solid way of thinking for soloing.

[jimmyhay]

I’ve been using the melodic minor a half step above the root of the dominant for quite a while(through sheer laziness 🤓), but I never thought of just using minor language. This is great. Thanks.

[mickcarpenter]

This is very helpful, I particularly liked the examples. In light of this I think what I will do is mark up my lead sheets on dominant chords with the relevant minors and then practice these scales beforehand, eg Bb7 - Bmin. Then I won't have to think too hard when I actually play pieces.

[deansaghafi]

These lines are not coming from the Altered Scale but are coming from the Significant Minor of the Tritone, as Grand Master Barry Harris would call it. For example Ab7, Tritone is D7 A minor is the significant Minor arrpegio of the Tritone. It is on the 5th degree of the D7 scale. Grand Master Harris also taught us line playing A minor 6 lines too instead of playing the 7th degree. I hope this helps everybody and is another explanation for the same thing that's being discussed.
Blessings

[EdwinDekker]

The scale comes from the minor chord on the 4th. Example A -> Dmi -> A
Scale on the Dmi is D melodic minor, which translates to the "backdoor dominant" G7#11, leading to tritone substitute C#alt

[ericfredenburgh]

Eb7b5 ( eb db g a) A7( a c# e g) so em7 ( e g b d ) is essentially playing the upper structure of the parent chord when the eb chord is thought of as being an A7 with an altered root. There is a transcription of Adderlys solo on straight no chaser where his brilliance in alternate arpeggios is shown. Great video here, I subscribed! Can’t wait to see more!