another way you can think about the scales is as if you’re playing the major scale a half step below, but moving the root note back up a half step. for example: C alt is just a B major scale but the Bs are replaced with Cs.
I just learn the 10 diatonic scales ( the FULL diminished HW/WH or messiani modes are too much of mind twisters for me at the moment.lmao) I do know you can stack dominant chords over each b3 intervals.. So Im guessing....every possible combination is possible) These are just preludes...of me getting theres someday.lol I play all 12 notes this way too...thou.lmao Harmonic min' melodic min harmonic min b2 melodic min b2 harmonic min b5 melodic min b5 meldoc min #4 Harmonic min #4 ion #6......Just incase i wanna play Bmaj7 to G# minor I know how to play G# min, diminant into C# min or Maj using the Melodic min #4 = G# phrygian b4 anyways... mix Mix #2 Mix #4 Mix #2, #4 mix b2 Mix b6 Mix b2, #4 mix b2, b6 phyg b4 loc b4 aeo b4, b5... ion #5, b7 so...it would be just like this Ion, #4, #5, b7 Melodic min b2 i can also do mix. b2, b5, b6..too lol I like to keep it simple...if i wanna make a Maj7 instead of b7 from any of those modes...I just will....kill two or three birds in one stone.lol
Hey Aimee, just wanted to hop in and say thank you for sharing your knowledge, experience, and passion with us radoms lol. I'm a saxophonist and so is my best friend and we always come back to you for a refresh in theory. I knew to type your name in to get some help in alt understanding. You're Dope and I will pay all the likes that I owe your videos. Thank you!
OH! That’s the sound! Been trying to understand that for years! I sent this video to myself, and hope to doodle with it soon! Perfect, simplistic explanation, Aimee!! 😍
Thanks Aimee! Altered dominants are something I've known about but hadn't yet explored much in my playing, and (totally unrelated to that) I've recently been exploring modes of melodic minor. Both of those meant the timing on this was serendipitous for me. :)
Another interesting way of looking at this is playing the jazz melodic minor half step above the root note of the chord, thank u for this video, gives me more things to practise
Thinking of the melodic minor a half step above the root of each chord is a good trick for remembering altered scales. Also playing full diminished scales (whole step, half step, whole step, half step) works very well against these voicings.
This lesson really helped out immeasurably. I know 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths ( their m's, M's, augs, dims and quartals and 'So What' quartals ). But my problem is that I haven't been practicing them in my LH. I'm always using my right hand. This lesson gives my RH another task to make what I'm sounding out more interesting. I need to get used to playing the 3rd and 7th in my LH as well. ( I can do it but I don't know how to practice it because I haven't known what to play in RH ). I will definitely replay this lesson often! Thank you so much :-D
Thank you for your video. We also call this Important minor. Like, If you are playing C7alt in left hand, our Altered scale would be the 5th minor Tritone away. Like the tritone for C7 is F#, and 5th of F# is C#, so that's our important minor. And it creates our Altered scale, but it's a Melodic minor, or even better Bebop minor with flat 6, or Minor Sixth diminished as Barry loves to say. And ofcourse you can play this scale with chords. Like You're playing C7alt, you can move in that chord by playing C# minor 6th diminished scale. C#-6, D#o7, then first inversion of C#-6, and first inversion of D#o7 and so on. Sorry if my english is not enough for explaining better. Thank you for your lesson. I enjoy your channel.
Aimee, I have been playing since JFK was president but still finding something that piques my interest every time I watch your stuff. These scale exercises is but one example. Thanks.
Thanks for the lesson Aimee! I've got a lot of practice ahead of me... One small note, at 8:48 I'd recommend the RH fingering to start with 2 for the E altered dominant scale, ie. 21234123, so the thumb is on the F. This gives you two fingering groups for the scale rather than 3 (after the 2 you've got 1234, 123, 1234, 123 etc rather than 12,123,12,12,123,12 etc), which should be easier and more fluid at a faster tempo. Can't wait to internalize these chords and scales!
I've been using a simple voicing for this chord lately.... its so simple yet it sounds so modern! (3 7b 9#)..... plus, it works with all the altered chords!
Well organized, well explained, done with love and insight as usual. I call it the cycle of 5ths Because each chord serves as the dominant, or the V to I of the next key.
One famous altered dominant chord is sharping the 9 alone, which Jimi Hendrix popularized. That chord is called the Hendrix chord, but at least the Beatles beat him to using it with their "Taxman" (only played *on* the phrase "Taxman") and "My Love Don't Give Me Presents" (every other beat at some points)
I’m working on a video about this very subject. I’ve actually traced it all the way back to Ravel! But I’ve got some more research to do before I make the video.
Awesome like me your way explain inner join the alter dominat scale with the jazz..I love the jazz I have my guitar I starter inside in this acknowledgement of alter scales..I think that your abstract is very important for learning the jazz....thankfully you are a jazz women....:-)
This all sounds like Tommy Flanagan's ideas on Coltrane's "Cousin Mary" from that Atlantic "Best of John Coltrane" album. It's my absolute favorite of all time. They knocked that one out of the park. If you ever see or hear any of those big black Grackle birds up in the palm trees, listen closely. They sing stuff like this all day long. If you took a portable keyboard to the park you could actually jam with them on the ideas you've shown here. You'd be amazed.
On the Bb you use you pinkie on Bb on the way up but on the way down where you need to cross between the two octaves you cross with fourth finger hitting the Bb instead. That’s interesting but you need to remember two fingerings. Whereas you could use middle finger on D and 4th finger on Bb in both directions.
kiwiboy1999 omg are saying you play ocarina-jazz?! Have you got some influences for that, some other people who do it, who I could listen to? I find the idea very fascinating.
I'm definitely giving jazz a good go haha I love improv and the more I learn it the more a lot of jazz makes sense to me and feels good. I don't know anyone else who does it. I just picked up the ocarina and happened to start enjoying jazz at the same time and I eventually realised I could marry the two. It'd be lovely to have some inspiration but for the moment I just listen to jazz melodies and slowly make my style of playing what I want to. I've made a lot of progress and some tunes fit jazz really really well. I'm just hoping to get a wooden ocarina so it has a softer tone, more appropriate for the style than the harsh ceramic sound. playing around with scales has proven invaluable.
the difference my friend, is ocarina is an awful instrument, its the woodwinds equivalent of a melodica. It has no range and moving up and down chromatically is unsustainable. being the owner of two ceramic ocarinas the instruments are volatile and slight indentation to any section of it will render the instrument inert. Its not an instrument you can fluently move through notes with nor play loudly in any kind of group of setting without carefully designed PA. There is a reason no one plays it is primordial, an anachronism of human history only the most Zelda inspired musicians dared to give it a go and few mustered the basics. To approach Jazz on this instrument is tantamount to trying to play jazz on a rubber band. Sort of a waste of time
This is a very useful tutorial, people talk a lot about the altered dominant scale, but rarely say where it is derived from and show the chords that go with it. You refer to the tri-tone substitute and it's worth saying that this is also a special chord to use with the scale because it emphasises the sharp 4th which the other chords do not, and adds a different colour. I'll certainly be using your routine when I practice.
Great lesson thanks. There’s so many scales to practice that it would be good to combine in one exercise. For example I try to practice my 2-5-1s while playing the pentatonic on the 2, the altered on the alt5 and the descending bebop on the 1.
Great video! As a piano player who uses scales constantly, I thought I might share my way of looking at fingerings for 7-note scales, the way I learned these at jazz school with a great teacher. This is because I believe some of the right hand scale fingerings you used (Bb7alt, Eb7alt) are non-optimal for the majority of hands. I've been using the same ones for years and didn't ever need to memorise them since the rules to finding them are: 1) Find a simpler scale that you can finger 1234-123 or 123-1234 (Like Cmaj/Gmaj -> 123-1234, or Emaj/Fmaj -> 1234-123). 2) Find the notes you should alter to fit that same fingering, then be certain thumb goes for sure on the 1st degree of the scale you are using for this trick (it might be the very note you have to alter, though). Example I: for F7alt you find your Emaj and raise the E to F. So thumb goes on F (should be E, but it's the altered note) and B (since Emaj is 1234-123). Example II: for B7alt you find your Fmaj, then raise the 4th and lower the 7th. So thumb on F and C. Example III: for Eb7alt you find your Bmaj then lower the 6th and lower the 7th. So thumb on B and E. Example IV: for E7alt you find your Fmaj then lower the 3rd. So thumb on F and C. Note that thumb usually goes on B/C and E/F, always some combination of those. If you are at a certain point using thumb on some other key, be sure that, although it might work well for you, it's not the most efficient and you're forcing your fingers to think more than they should. You will almost never see players who play lots of scales deviate from these 2 "points of thumb gravity" when playing fast. 99% of what they are playing is fingered with 123-1234 or 1234-123 "blocks" or "cells", and it makes sense considering: a) the thumb passing under the other fingers is a high energy cost; b) 2-1 is inefficient since after 1 you're going to use 2 again, so you're making life hard for that finger; and c) 5-1 is no good. So, basically, by relating altered scale fingerings to major scale fingerings you have played a thousand times, you really think less, and you're building on muscle memory you have already developed. It's actually very interesting to perceive how much of the jazz piano "idiom" comes from this fingering approach. Only the greatest technicians have transcended this (Iverson, Jarrett, Hersch, Mehldau...).
Aimee, I just started watching your videos a few weeks ago and I really love them. Thank you so much for making them. I have a question about practicing scales which builds on something you said in this video when you mentioned things you can do when practicing scales to make them more interesting. I started learning Jazz in '97 but I got to busy. I bought the Mark Levine Jazz theory book back then and in that book on p. 100 - 101 he suggests practicing scales in ascending and descending thirds and fourths. What I started doing back then is basically using that but trying to make the scales sound like a piece of improv you would hear. Some of your videos on scales you talk about practicing contrary motion which I would think is important for building hand independence. It seems like sometimes you want to practice scales in a straight ahead manner like that for building muscle memory and finger strength and then other times you would want to focus on how you would use the scales/modes in your playing where you would maybe do this exercise I've been doing with thirds and fourths which would link into what you talk about in another one of your videos about hearing the note in your head before you play it i.e. singing the note. That was all a preface to my question. Is there a sort of comprehensive scale/mode practice philosophy/routine that exists that would encompass all of these ideas? If not maybe we can create something like that? So that we can build muscle memory and learn interesting licks and so on without picking up bad habits of lacking that expressiveness from the heart you mention once we go to apply those scales/modes to improvisation. Also, I'd like to see you do a video on tonal centers if you don't already have one. Thanks.
3:00 ! Aimme how to practice these scales is what we want to know! Give us more interesting melodies and licks and exercises that will enhance our technique please!!
It's like smoking a joint back in the day and discovering something profound: The voicings (7-#9-3-#5) you are showing are the same notes common for voicing a dominant 7 chord a tritone away. For example, the C altered dominant voicing is the same as the F#7 voicing
Awesome as always Aimee. Two things that I find useful that I don't think you point out that might help some visualize the scale. It is the seventh mode of the jazz minor scale (minor third, natural everything else, I also think of it as the "tonic minor" scale), so for whatever reason, I find it easy to visualize the scale as the jazz minor scale built on a half step above the root. So, as you point out, the Dbalt scale is pretty easy because it is only the d tonic minor scale starting on the 7th. The other thing that flows from this same thinking is that the left hand voicings are the same as lydian Major 7 (M7 #11) voicings that are so prevalent in modern jazz post 1960 or so. So the F7 alt voicing with the 7th on the bottom, spelled Eb Ab A Db is the same enharmonically as an AM7#11 (A lyd) voicing. Not sure this is helpful to anyone else, but in my short exposure to the Berklee system, they emphasize modes of the tonic minor (ascending melodic minor is the classical name for this scale), and I ended up by practicing that a lot. It opened the door to a lot of "hip" stuff that I hadn't understood before that, including things like the E/C or M7#5 stuff that is all over jazz starting with herbie and wayne.
Thanks Eric. I do mention it in the description of the video, but to me, somehow thinking along those lines has never been helpful. I know that it is very helpful for many people, so I appreciate you mentioning it. Very well stated.
I learned from elsewhere, to simplify the brain work think of the melodic minor a half step above the root. ex. C altered has the same notes as Db melodic minor scale. What do you think ?
What helps me when learning inversions is to notice which of the keys are "only white" or "only black" in the root. Then, when I'm going up and down the inversions, I have a better image of what's coming. Does this make any sense?
Hi Aimée, i would like to get some sheet music (eg. 'practising altered dominant chords and scales) from you, but i don't have pay pal. Is there any other way i can get & pay that material? Kind regards Rolphe Fehlmann
Hi Aimee, What you call the "sharp5 - sharp 9" chord voicing is what one of my early jazz piano teachers used to call "augmented 7th" chords. What you are talking about is simply adding a sharp nine on the top of an augmented chord that includes a dominant 7th interval. Am I right? Have a wonderful day, Tony from the Detroit area.
That is actually quite hard. would be helpful to see the big ROOT NOTE on top for every one of these scales. also, are we allowed to use the much mellower sounding tritone root with this chord and the scale? I am trying to remember it by working from a whole note scale and just flattening the 2 and 3, maybe it will work. Building the chords so quickly is hard though.
One of the hardest parts of being a jazz piano player is learning to exist and create without hearing the root. First when I was doing these kinds of exercises, I would ask my teacher or a friend to play along with me and add the root notes in the left-hand. Because it sounded like chaos to me otherwise. When you need to, just reach down with your right hand and plunk one out. In time, it will begin to sound like music to you and you won’t need that crutch.
the way you think about fingering is very confusing (at least to me). why not just think about: melodic minor fingering a half step above, which is basically where this scale comes from. you end up creating a lot of different fingerings for each particular scale not really thining about the whole and where the scale comes from. I think its probably very hard to master this like this but if it works for you is ok I guess.
Whats your/anyones thoughts on just using the melodic minor scale from a semitone above over altered dominants. This is the method i use at the moment but is it easier to think just of interms of the diminished whole tone?
Aimee Nolte Music oh ok awesome thank you, i think i'll try and give this method a go. Sometimes using the melodic minir method the intervals in relation to the alterd dominant confuses me. Thanks for the response aimee!
I personally don't like using this approach to thinking about altered dominants generally. However, I've noticed that when focusing purely on these altered dominants without the context of surrounding harmonies, it sounds more like melodic minor for me. For instance, at 5:13 when Aimee plays the C altered dominant and ends on the C, it feels like it wants to resolve upward to Db, with a rootless left hand voicing underneath (13 9 b3 5, in Db). When played in context, that goes away for me.
This has to do with modes more generally speaking (since I haven't really explored the altered scale that much), but to me an important part of understanding how they worked was stopping to treat them as the "major scale starting from another note". When I started relating all of the sounds to the root of the mode, it suddenly started making a lot of sense. So if I wanted to explore the altered scale a bit more, I would relate everything to the root of the scale (so I would think it as R, b9, #9, 3, #11, #5, b7 instead of 7, 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, because that's also how you will hear it in relation to the chord you are playing over). I do agree with AJ Coppa, though. I also heard it as melodic minor here - the "root" actually sounded like the leading tone to me (probably because the chords in the left hand were rootless and there was no actual chord progression). But in the context of actual music I would not hear it this way.
Here's a beginner question: Since there are 2nds and 4ths, why do we need 9ths and 11ths? Aren't they just inversions of each other based on where they're played? Thanks!
:) Once the 7th is being played, any extensions beyond the 7 have to be higher than the 7...so 9,11,13. If the 7th is not played, you can use the smaller numbers.
My teacher told me there's no 5 in the altered scale but sees the Sharp 5 as a flat 6 but he calls it a flat13...is it the same note with 3 different names ? is it really important how you name it ? I'm a Little bit confused !!!
Which inversion you should use is all about the interval between the melody and the bass note. In traditional (classical) harmony, 6ths and 3rds/10ths are good intervals between the melody and the bass. Octaves and fifths also work just fine and are preferred in the end of a section (so if you want to end a section, root position tonic chord with the octave as the highest note is the most stable sound - but if it's not the end of a section, you should probably avoid a dominant resolving to a root position tonic with the octave on top because this usually sounds too stable). Root position and first inversion are most commonly used. Root position sounds more stable and a bit stronger (for example the dominant chord in the root position resolving to the tonic in the root position sounds a lot stronger than an inverted dominant resolving to a tonic or a root position dominant resolving to an inverted tonic). Second inversion is something you don't want to use too often. It works if the bassline (and the melody) moves stepwise. The second inversion of the tonic is also very commonly used right before the dominant chord (and kind of works as a 6-5, 4-3 suspension). Another use of the second inversion is in I-IV-I kind of progressions with a pedal point bassline. For example C-F/C-C would be a good example of this. These three uses are pretty much the only uses of the second inversion, at least in traditional harmony. And with 7th chords the same things apply, but you also have the 3rd inversion (7th in the bass). In this inversion the bass always resolves down by a step. So G7/F always resolves to C/E or probably Em7, or Cm/Eb in a minor key. You learn to use inversions by studying how other composers use inversions. But they mostly follow the guidelines I mentioned.
Why do we call the 7th a “dominant 7th”? Is it to be more more specific, but you could just call it the “7th” and that would also be right? Could we theoretically be more specific with the other notes too? And call the 3rd the “dominant 3rd” of the chord, and the root is more specifically the “dominant root” of the chord, but we usually don’t get that specific with any part of the chord except the 7th, maybe as a kind of chord-speak etiquette/custom?
The word “dominant” as it relates to the seventh chord is used to let us know that the 3rd is major and the 7th is minor. If we just said “7th chord,” we wouldn’t know if it was a dominant, major or minor 7th. Or a minor major 7th for that matter. Each is different in the way it is built and it’s function. Hope that helps. My video about “how to build and notate chords” might be helpful.
i just found a nice alternative said the spider to the fly...Lets play for C7 CDb Eb E Gb (g)Ab Bb (b) and triplets nice he the c is on a strong beat the fly didnt listen instead ate the thw fly andjoyed this little supper...not knowing just have aten membet of the jazz police...
