You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 4 Scales Every Jazz Musician Should Know

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Today, Peter and Adam list off some essential scales that every jazz player, regardless of instrument, needs to know.Today's episode is sponsored by Anytune (featuring an Anytune remix in the intro and outro!) Anytune is the perfect tool for anyone looking to improve their practice sessions. Learn, transcribe, and practice solos by slowing down the tempo, adjusting the pitch, and (for Pro+ users), isolating specific instruments in the mix. For more info, follow this link. And for access to the Android beta of Anytune, click this link.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Adam hosts a Guided Practice Session for non-members on YouTube8:00 PM - Peter continues his weekly Shelter in Place concert series on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Yes. What you know about this? I really miss my hammer 88, man. I'm Adam Manus. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Music advice coming at you back in the... Pod hall?

Pot Hall. I think we're going to call this the pod hall. This is amazing. It is kind of amazing. Yeah, so we were separated for months of the pandemic. We were sheltering from home. We were doing some remote episodes. Remember what do you know about Instagram live episodes? You remember those? Come on, man. We've been through a lot, man. We tried all the platforms and we were recording remotely up until last week. Yeah. And so we thought we'd come back. We have our extra long table so we can be socially distanced as we podcast. Spircially connected, but socially distance, as we like to say. But yeah, we're in this big open. We got our 30. five foot high ceilings here. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. And we just want to be clear here. And we're excited to be back on YouTube, back in the, on the podcast and everything, but we're very much

not like the pandemic is over. I mean, it's still happening. We're trying to just be careful, but also give you guys a little bit of entertainment, a little bit of things. Everyone's been practicing a lot at home, which is great. And so we thought to come back with this episode and talk about four scales that every jazz musician should know

would be appropriate because it's a little bit of a back to basics, but it's an important subject. There's nothing more important for me right now except to tell you about AnyTune. Oh, I love, come on. You preach it to the choir now, but tell the folks. Anything's our great sponsor. We were using them before they were our sponsor.

Go to anytune.com. You'll hear it to check out really one of the best tools there is for learning music. It's an amazing transcription tool. Put in your track, whatever classic track you want. You can slow it down without losing pitch. You can change the pitch if you want to. You can set markers and loops.

The markers are great to keep your practice organized. I know you're a big organized practiser. I know, man. And efficiency. Can we talk about a little efficiency? That's what it's all about, man. Come on. It's what it's all about.

So go to Anytune. U.S. you'll hear it to check it out for yourself. And they are going to be on Android very soon and maybe stick around to the end of the episode to learn how you could be one of the first on Android with AnyTune. Ooh, a little beta program. Maybe in a fast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are we talking about today? Okay, four scales every jazz musician should know. Did you hear how I phrase that? Yeah, you said should know, not four scales every jazz musician might want to check. out. You didn't say four scales every jazz saxophonist should know or every bebop piano should know. You said four scales every jazz musician should know. Yeah. And now that I'm thinking about,

we could have said four jazz, four scales every jazz musician better had no. But we didn't want to go that far. We said should. We're going to leave it up to you if you're going to take it upon yourself. Yeah, we're like 85% dogmatism with this right now. We believe most of it. So we'll go through. Number one, I think, I mean, you know, Looking down our list here of scales, it's like some of these scales maybe wouldn't have been used by like Lewis Armstrong. Number one, though, definitely would have been. That's right. And these are not in any particular order. And there's certainly, this is not all inclusive, but these are foundational ones that you definitely want to know before you go on to other ones.

And yes, the blue scale. This is so important because it really speaks to, I mean, not that you can, and we'll talk about what it is, but not that you can just run up and down it. Not for any of these. Nobody wants to do that. but for what it represents as the foundation of being a great improviser and what it does to put the tools that it puts into your little toolbox that you can pull out at any time. That's right. Our number one is the blue scale. It's one of the most foundational scales in this music and a lot of music. It really is the heart and soul of the music to this day. You know, it's still being used by modern jazz musicians in a modern context. And it seems pretty limitless of what we can draw from this amazing scale. Now, one caveat with all of these things. Like, We're talking about them as scales. I think the blue scale represents this more than any of the others.

It's not really a scale. It's a sound. It's a sound. It's a feeling. It's a spirit. Yeah, there's specific notes. We're going to give you those and we're going to give you our little secret edition. But it's how you use them.

Yeah. And it's, you know, all these chord scales, arpeggios, riffs, melodic ideas, rhythmic patterns, all these are just things that we can tell our story, you know. And the blue is to be able to tap into the blues as a foundational piece of just all American music that came after, but especially jazz, is very special. Yeah, the interesting thing with the blues scale is it's not like the Ionian scale, right, where you can, the major scale. Oh, no, yeah, that one I know. That I know. No, but it's not like that where you can make make, make, like, you know, bluesy double stops and things like that, but to make like

whole voicing, chord voicing out of it, or even have modes of it, that's not really how it works. It works more as a sound, as a shape, as a feeling, as a guttural feeling. It's got this great play on major versus minor. Like you can play a C blue scale over a C dominant seven chord, right? So you got that major third in the chord, but the C blue scale is C, E flat, F, G, G, and B flat. So you've got that minor third on the scale

and the major third in the chord. Now, that's a great sound. It's a great sound in that. I love that you put it. Because when I was down here, that's kind of the best way to really get that, that duality, that tension between the major third and the minor third.

I know some of you'll say like, oh, that's the sharp nine, whatever. I mean, it kind of is. But in terms of like the function of the sound and how you tell you story, it's really about that shifting. Well, here's where the secret blue scale comes in, right? Is we can actually apply that same concept of that difference between major and minor to the scale itself. So I know you love to add in that major third with the minor third on the blue scale. I think this is a good way to practice it, too, especially as you go more advanced level.

So we go root, minor, third, major third, fourth, flat of fifth, fifth, dominant seventh. And if you think about it and hear it that way, then you start to get that, you know, that there's that chromaticism in the middle of it, right? But those are all kind of leading tones like that. The major third can be a leading tone down to the minor third. Yeah, yeah.

But the minor third can be a leading tone up to that. Totally. Flat and fifth, up to the fifth. Yeah, they both can be very strong tones too. Yes. Man, they both are kind of. interchangeable. Yeah.

And then it kind of gives you a more advanced conception of the harmonic possibilities that you can bring out in your melodic improvisations when you think about that third as an equal partner. So, okay, how do I use the blues scale? Do I just put it on every single chord? Yep. So like a D minor seven, D-blue scale, G7, G-Blu-scale,

C-major-7, C-blue scale. Is that how I use it? You do that if you want to sound amateur. Well, you know what? I shouldn't totally, like if you're really next level, you can get away with that. Yeah. But generally, you know,

We've talked about this before, always worth iterating. Kind of our concept. And a lot of, I think, good players is over the blues, you're on the one, and then you go to the four. You're still on that C blue scale. And then you go to the five, you might play the five. And play some blue z stuff, but not necessarily a straight blue scale. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you can combine it with the bluesy dominant stuff with straight blue scale. Still that C blue. So it's really just, you're thinking about it as. as a sound, as an area, as a destination that you can call upon it. Can I throw one more advanced level to this? Oh, please, don't at me. What do you know about the major blue scale? Well, I didn't know much until our friend Warren Wolfe taught it to.

I mean, I knew the sound. I know, yeah. It was so weird the way he said it, though, but it makes sense. It's the sound that we are all familiar with. So the major blue scale is, I always thought about this actually as the relative minor blue scale. So we're in the key of C, right? If we're on a C blues, like we have our C blues scale. But I always, when I was growing up, I always heard people,

use the A blues scale over the... Exactly. And Warren Wolf calls that A blue scale over that C, the C major blue scale. Really, that's just semantics about nomenclature. What you really need to know is over like a C-7 chord, right? You can play either the C-blue scale or the A-blue scale or, quote-unquote, C-major, blue scale. Yeah. And you can interchange between the two of them. Like do a little, do a little chorus mixing in both. Really, that one really speaks to that same, it's a little, it's a little, on the fifth and the flat of fifth, but it's really the major third and the minor third.

Because with the A, you have A, C, D, E, Fla, E. You still have that E flat E. Thing in there, right? So even though it's a whole different scale, those two notes that we were just talking about, the major third, minor third, are still in there and important. And you really are, you can also think about it as the dominant seventh becoming the six because that's that A, you know.

Yeah, totally. Good stuff. Yeah. That's blue scale. So let's go on to number two of our four scales every jazz musician should know. Now, this is definitely one that Lewis Armstrong probably didn't play a lot of. But I think I might have heard and play, but we'll come back in another episode on that. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

But you're right. It's not necessarily something associated with him. Yeah, this was, this came about a little bit later. This is the altered scale. The altered scale, right. Yeah. Altered scale. Should we stay, let's go up to, let's go to G, alter scale.

So we're going root. Yep. Flated ninth, sharp nine, major third. Uh-huh. And then whole tone. And then whole tone. You've converted me. I can see now.

I forced you into it. Yeah, the altered scale. We've, we've talked about this before on the podcast. It's such a cool scale, especially if you want to do a dominant chord, going to a minor chord, it's really your most useful option. It's really like straight down the middle. That's what you want to use. So if, again, you have a G7 altered, right, an altered chord, or G7, or G7, sharp, 9, flat 13, right?

If we use the G altered, right, that G, A, flat, B, F, right? Yep. that is a great sound going to that C minor 6. Right, or C minor 7. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you know what? I was just remembering, too, that some of these scales, and well, not just a few of them,

but this one for sure, you can play it as a voicing. That's a very Herbie Hancock expedition, right? Just take the whole scale? Yeah. Yeah, and that's all within, that's all lined up in a row diatonically within an octave. Of course, you can stretch them out. So, you know, sometimes when you take just one note,

if you know the right one and stretch it out. So this would be all in a row. I'm going to take out the sharp nine, the B flat, and put it on top. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of nice. Again, for any dominant chord going to a minor chord,

the altered is chef's kiss. It's the way to go. I mean, it really is. Yeah. And that leads us into our third scale that every jazz musician should know. This is kind of the opposite of that. This is the diminished scale.

Right? So the half whole diminished scale is where we'll start. This is a scale that you would, you would use over a dominant chord going to a one chord again, but this time the one, it sounds best if the one is major, right? So if you have a 5-1 going to a, let's say we do the same G7, but we do G7-flat-9, let's do G-13 flat-9-sharp 11. Yeah.

So this is where the G-half-hole diminished scale comes in great. Now we're going to spell out this scale, and the first four notes are going to seem very familiar. G, A, flat, B-flat, B. Now here's where we take a little bit of a departure. Right. From the altered scale. From the altered scale. C sharp. D.

Moll. E. F. Maybe we're just, we're right there. Exactly. So this is a scale that's based off of a very simple pattern. Half step, whole step, half step, whole step, half step, whole step, half step, whole step. Yeah. And this.

As infinitum. Exactly. And it just keeps going. And so whenever you see like G7, flat nine, what they really want is probably this kind of sound. Like this kind of sound, going to a C major seven, hit it to repeat. Yeah, totally. I mean, that's jazz 101, baby. That's right, that's right.

Now, let's just talk a little bit about on this scale, and this can be applied to the other four scales and as well as pretty much any scale. Get creative with your practice. Always a reminder. This is not just about, yeah, it's about learning them and all the keys and stuff like that, of course. But you want to be thinking from the beginning

about different ways that you can apply them, learn them, internalize the technique on your particular instrument. So for this, diminished, I'm always thinking about broken thirds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's changing up the order. You know what I like to do? Check this out.

Start with this pattern. G, B, D, D, F. I mean, that's just a very, right? This is a G7 chord, right? Down the middle. Now take that up the diminish scale. Wait, hold. Right?

It gets weird fast. That's what I'm saying, man. This is what's so cool about the diminishing scale. You just start one pattern. You're like, wonder what happened if I just move this up? up the diminutive scale, you're going to have a lot of cool stuff happen. Yeah. And to do that, too, I would say you start with the thirds and then maybe fifths. Yeah. That'll kind of help you. You know, then you can go up to the seventh. Break it up with major thirds, minor thirds, however,

whatever you're feeling. Whatever you're feeling. No, it's, it really is such a, like, the diminished scale for me is like, it's such an easy way to incorporate some cool patterns because you, like, you just set it and forget it. Yep. What was that? That was some kind of commercial in the 70s. Set it and forget it. Some kind of hair coloring. That's right. Okay, what's our fourth scale that every jazz musician should know? Well, this is the pentatonic. Oh, yeah. This is the pentatonic.

And this one's so important because it kind of goes next level with, well, it's a little bit of a combination in a way of some of the things we talked about the blues scale and with the diminished scale. Can we talk about the history of the pentatonic scale in the jazz language? Does that get into some demonic stuff with the pentagram? I don't want to go that far back. Like think Art Tatum, right? Think about like big runs coming down a pentatonic scale. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of like when I think about, like,

how the pentatonic scale used to be used, a lot of that kind of like flourishing, art tatami runs. Oscar Peterson would play them like that. But then in the 60s, gentlemen by the name of McCoy Tyner came along. A great McCoy. Changed the game.

And got into more straight pentatonic patterns. That's right. Fourth, quartal, as I recently learned it was called. Cortal. It's a weird word. Kind of like your concept, too, about, you know, with moving up broken sevens, basically through the diminished.

Same kind of, you know, interesting patterns can come about over. Totally. But with force, right? So we go C minor pentatonic. And we'll talk about major minor pentatonic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if we go up in a diatonic fashion, starting there, you're going to, it's not always going to be forced because,

and we'll talk about what the notes are, but you get some triads in there too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I give a pro tip for the pentatonic? Please. When you're messing, like, let's say, let's just say we're playing on one chord. We're playing on a C minor. Wait, hold up to second. Okay, we're playing on a C minor.

Okay, I said it. Go. Thank you for that. I'm so glad that the dad jokes didn't die away. Happy Father's Day, by the way. Happy Father's Day, by the way. So we're playing on a C minor seven. We're playing a C minor pentatonic, right?

Get to know your neighboring pentatonics a half step above and below, because you can slip and slide. with those Joneses all day long. You know what I say? Show him, Pete. Oh, yeah. Go back and forth. Do the one below.

Do the one below. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, see, how slick is that? Yeah, and I mean, a real easy application and basic but useful forever is to when you slip and slide in and out of them change directions. So you might go.

You might as opposed to, I mean, that's cool, but you keep that C minor pentatonic as your home base and maybe you go up to D flat or you go down to B, Penter pentatonic just for a second. Yeah. Oh, that's where the meat is, buddy.

That's where the meat, that's where the gristle meets with the fat. Yeah. I don't know where I'm talking about. That's where the plant-based meat is. Come on, man. That was insensitive. So that's it. Those are our four.

Those are, those are, that's a Mount Rushmore. We got our bonus ones too coming up. We're going to wait on that because I got to conceptualize it first. But that, yeah, those are big. So number one, we had the blue scale. Number two was the altar scale. Number three was the diminished scale. Number four was the pentagram.

That's right. And before we get to our... No, it's not the pentagram. It's a pentatonic. It's a pentagram. Before we get to our bonus scale, I just want to say that the Anytune team is close to, did you know this? They're close to the Enetune on Android, private beta.

I knew they were getting close. Is it, are we allowed to talk about it now? We are. Okay. And actually, you can go sign up at anytune. That's dot a pp. Yeah. Slash Android.

And you could sign up for the private Anytune Android beta. Now, I use... I have an iPhone because I'm a basic bot. And I use it on the iPhone and it's beautiful. It is beautiful. Yeah, yeah. But soon, Android folks will not be left out. But I mean, you know, I'm not surprised Anything is doing it.

There's such a thoughtful company, not only from a musical standpoint, but from a software development standpoint that they don't just throw stuff out there. And so they've been developing this for a while. And it's a totally different system that they have to deal with on Android. I'm no doubt it's going to be great. So get up on that beta test. We'll put a link here in the description. Go to nitune.com slash Android to check out the beta test of anything.

AnyTune Android. Yeah, and just if you're not on Android or you want to check out the Mac or the Windows app, they are apps, their programs for your computer or the iPhone app, which is great. Go to anytune.us slash you'll hear it for a very special offer. I'm going to go transcribe some Oscar Peterson after this. You know what I'm saying? That's how we do it. That's how we do it.

Until tomorrow. You'll hear it.