Octatonic scale application

[Red Wonder]

This is a very intriguing looking scale...

c c# d# e f# g a a# c'

It alternates semitones and tones...

Have any of you applied this scale before. It certainly has an enigmatic quality to it.

Is it primarily for augmented chords?

[Kelly Coyle]

Diminished. I first saw it in David Baker's Patterns for Jazz, but it also appears in The Lydian Chromatic Concept. (The common scale for augmented chords is all whole tones.) On a dom seventh chord, you can start it with a half step for an unusual bluesy sound:

C7
C Db D# E F# G A Bb C

For diminished chords, you can start from either the half step or the whole step. I was told once that you can decide which one to use based on the key of the progression that the diminished chord appears in, but I didn't understand what the guy meant by that.

So, C dim could be either
C Db D# E F# G A Bb C
or
C D Eb F Gb Ab A B.

[Red Wonder]

This scale is flat-out awesome! Especially when you utilize one string. Is it safe to say its a chromatic sounding 8 tone scale? It seems that this scale would fit just about anywhere (in a blues context perhaps.) Diminished, augmented, major, or minor.

Then ahain I just discovered it so what do I know? I do know that it sounds appealing. Especially with the tritone thrown in for good measure.

[alx564]

What exactly is the name of this scale? I know when I learned it my teacher just called it the half-whole scale just because of the alternating intervals, but does this scale have a more formal name? I also learned the whole-half scale as my teacher so cleverly called it.

[Kelly Coyle]

Diminished. Really.