I've been studying music with a theory buff in the Navy Band. He's a great bassist/musician and awesome at theory. I am studying the jazz minor/melodic minor scale and until then I never played it. It basically opened a whole new world to me about jazz improv. :hyper:

I have been trying to get the new sound in my head for a while now and finally got it and now trying to get the modes embedded in my fingers and brains so it's second nature. Now using it will be much tougher but can anyone else shed some of their experieinces with this scale. It's unique in it's own way and I can see why Scofield loves playing with this, not to exclude other musicians.:bassist:

Remember there's a difference between melodic minor and jazz minor. Jazz minor specifies that it stays the same ascending and descending.

I recommend jazz minor particularly for playing over min(Maj7) chords. There's a bit of hierarchy in the modes, I'd rank the most important being Altered (7) followed by Lydian Dominant (4). Not to say you can't use the others but I find those very essential.

I'd recommend looking into the related chords of each mode. Try these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_harmony#Melodic_minor_scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_scale

I got the ascending/descending thing down and do know the difference. We'll be working with more jazz minor than anything else but I just like to know both so I am more well rounded. I actually took a look at wikipedia about those scales and thought it was very informative. Thanks.

i have been delving deeper into theory lately and i am still very new. can anyone give me the makeup of the melodic minor and jazz minor scales? what makes these scales unique from the church modes (i.e. ionian, dorian, phrygian, mixolydian, lydian, locrian) and how would i use those scales in my own music?

i have been delving deeper into theory lately and i am still very new. can anyone give me the makeup of the melodic minor and jazz minor scales? what makes these scales unique from the church modes (i.e. ionian, dorian, phrygian, mixolydian, lydian, locrian) and how would i use those scales in my own music?


You could think of it as a major scale with a b3 or a minor scale with a nat. 6 and 7.


Melodic minor

ascending: C D Eb F G A B C
descending: C Bb Ab G F Eb D C


Jazz minor

ascending and descending: C D Eb F G A B C



The way you use it depends on the situation. It's so named because it's often used for melodies (ex. Bach's Bourree in Em BWV 996). It's the same ascending or descending in jazz but the descending version is different in classical. The reason (one reason?) for this is that the two tetrachords (halves of the scale) lead up and down to the tonic nicely.

In jazz it could be used for soloing or writing melodies. I like to use it over minMaj7 chords.

A couple modes of the MMi are used a lot in improv. The Lydian b7 and Altered scale. To hear the sound record a C7 chord and play a G MMi for the Lydian b7 sound or a Db MMi for an Altered sound.

and Locrian #2