recently been playing a b6 Mixo scale over a dominant 7...

[misterCRUSH]

anybody else using creative scale and chord combos?
I'm always up for learning new approaches...

 

[Oneirogenic]

There are so many colorful and dissonant scales you can get away with playing over dom7 chord especially in a minor key. The scale you referenced is one of the modes of melodic minor scale. I throw in the Phrygian Dominant scale (b2 b6 b7) wherever I can get away with it. Have fun and keep experimenting!

 

[Bob_Ross]

It's been a long time since my ear was content with just playing one particular scale over one particular chord, but good on you for working it out to get the sound in your ears and in your hands. As @Oneirogenic notes, that "b6 Mixo scale" you're working on is a mode of the melodic minor scale, and there is so much fertile ground to be mined from expoloring all of those modes.

Once you're comfortable with all of those modes, and the sound they yield, I would advocate listening to what happens when you move the tonal center of the scale away from the tonic [sic] of the chord you're blowing over...and then explore how to bring things back into alignment. Some of my most fruitful harmonic explorations (and/or listening experiences) have to do with centers that "orbit" the tonic: e.g., rather that playing (for example) G Mixolydian -- or G Mixolydian b6, or G Phrygian Dominant, or G Hungarian Minor, or G Hypomixolydian, etc. etc. etc. -- over a G7 chord, listen to what happens when you play an Ab Phrygian Dominant over that G7 chord...and then how you can resolve that.

 

[BrotherMister]

Once you dig into it a bit more you’ll start to realise that you can play pretty much anything over a V7 chord.

Mixolydian is usually a pretty dull choice as well, although it does depend on musical context. I recommend listening to and transcribing a bunch of great improvisers playing V7 chords. I tend to find you can tell who has learned to associate scale a with chord a because it sounds like they are painting by numbers and not really playing musical ideas.

 

[Snarf]

Try that scale over the tonic. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.