Chord-scale system
Encyclopedia
The chord-scale system is a method of matching, from a list of possible chords
, a list of possible scales. The system has been widely used since the 1970s and is "generally accepted in the jazz
world today". The system is an example of the difference between the treatment of dissonance
in jazz and classical harmony
: "Classical treats all notes that don't belong to the chord...as potential dissonances to be resolved...Non-classical harmony just tells you which note in the scale to [potentially] avoid..., meaning that all the others are okay".
The chord-scale system may be compared with another common method of improvisation, where one scale on one root note is used throughout all chords in a progression (for example the blues scale
on A for all chords of the blues progression: A7
E7 D7). In contrast, in the chord-scale system, a different scale is used for each chord in the progression (for example Mixolydian scales on A, E, and D for chords A7, E7, and D7, respectively). Improvisation approaches may be mixed, such as using "the blues approach" for a section of a progression and using the chord-scale system for the rest.
The sixteen scales commonly used today consist of the seven modes
of the major scale
, the seven modes of the melodic minor
scale, the diminished scales
, the whole-tone scale
, and pentatonic
and bebop scale
s. In the example below featuring C7#11 and C lydian dominant every note of the scale may be considered a chord tone while in the example above featuring A7 and A mixolydian the scale is thought of as a 'filling in' of the steps that are missing between members of the chord. Students now typically learn as many as twenty-one scales, which may be compared with the four scales commonly used in jazz in the 1940's (major, minor, mixolydian, and blues) and the two later added by bebop (diminished and whole-tone) to the tonal resources of jazz.
Originating with George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization
(1959), the chord-scale system is now the, "most widely used method for teaching jazz improvisation
in college". This approach is found in instructional books including Jerry Bergonzi
's Inside Improvisation series and characterized by the highly influential Play-A-Long series by Jamey Aebersold
. There are differences of approach within the system. For example, Russell associated the C major chord with the lydian scale, while teachers including John Mehegan, David Baker, and Mark Levine teach the major scale as the best match for a C major chord.
Miles Davis's Lydian Chromatic Concept-influenced first modal jazz
album Kind of Blue
, is often given as an example of chord-scale relationships in practice.
The chord-scale system provides familiarity with typical chord progressions, technical facility from practicing scales and chord arpeggio
s, and generally succeeds in reducing "'clams'", or notes heard as mistakes (through providing note-choice possibilities for the chords of progressions), and building "'chops'", or virtuosity.
However, disadvantages include the exclusion of non-chord tones characteristic of bop and free styles, the 'in between' sounds featured in the blues, and consideration of directionality created between the interaction of a solo and a chord progression: "The disadvantages of this system may become clear when students begin to question why their own playing does not sound like such outstanding linear-oriented players as Charlie Parker
, Sonny Stitt
or Johnny Griffin
(or, for that matter, the freer jazz stylists)":
Essential considerations of a style such as Charlie Parker's including, "rhythm, phrase shape and length, dynamics, and tone color
," as well as "passing tones, appoggiatura, and 'blue note
s'" are unaddressed. This appears to have led educators to emphasize a specific repertoire of pieces most appropriate to the chord-scale system, such as John Coltrane
's "Giant Steps
", while excluding others, such as Coltrane's later styles of composition, and producing generations of "pattern" players among college-educated musicians.
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
, a list of possible scales. The system has been widely used since the 1970s and is "generally accepted in the jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
world today". The system is an example of the difference between the treatment of dissonance
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
in jazz and classical harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
: "Classical treats all notes that don't belong to the chord...as potential dissonances to be resolved...Non-classical harmony just tells you which note in the scale to [potentially] avoid..., meaning that all the others are okay".
The chord-scale system may be compared with another common method of improvisation, where one scale on one root note is used throughout all chords in a progression (for example the blues scale
Blues scale
The term blues scale is used to describe a few scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. See: blues.The hexatonic, or six note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the 4th or 5th degree...
on A for all chords of the blues progression: A7
Dominant seventh chord
In music theory, a dominant seventh chord, or major minor seventh chord,is a chord composed of a root, major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh. It can be also viewed as a major triad with an additional minor seventh...
E7 D7). In contrast, in the chord-scale system, a different scale is used for each chord in the progression (for example Mixolydian scales on A, E, and D for chords A7, E7, and D7, respectively). Improvisation approaches may be mixed, such as using "the blues approach" for a section of a progression and using the chord-scale system for the rest.
The sixteen scales commonly used today consist of the seven modes
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
of the major scale
Major scale
In music theory, the major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales. It is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth which duplicates the first an octave higher. In solfege these notes correspond to the syllables "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti/Si, ", the "Do" in the parenthesis at...
, the seven modes of the melodic minor
Minor scale
A minor scale in Western music theory includes any scale that contains, in its tonic triad, at least three essential scale degrees: 1) the tonic , 2) a minor-third, or an interval of a minor third above the tonic, and 3) a perfect-fifth, or an interval of a perfect fifth above the tonic, altogether...
scale, the diminished scales
Octatonic scale
An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. Among the most famous of these is a scale in which the notes ascend in alternating intervals of a whole step and a half step, creating a symmetric scale...
, the whole-tone scale
Whole tone scale
In music, a whole tone scale is a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole step. There are only two complementary whole tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic scales:...
, and pentatonic
Pentatonic scale
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...
and bebop scale
Bebop scale
The bebop scales are frequently used in jazz improvisation and are derived from the modes of the major scale, the melodic minor scale, and the harmonic minor scale....
s. In the example below featuring C7#11 and C lydian dominant every note of the scale may be considered a chord tone while in the example above featuring A7 and A mixolydian the scale is thought of as a 'filling in' of the steps that are missing between members of the chord. Students now typically learn as many as twenty-one scales, which may be compared with the four scales commonly used in jazz in the 1940's (major, minor, mixolydian, and blues) and the two later added by bebop (diminished and whole-tone) to the tonal resources of jazz.
Originating with George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization
Lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization
The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization was written by George Russell and is the founding text of the Lydian Chromatic Concept , or Lydian Chromatic Theory . The work postulates that all music is based on the tonal gravity of the Lydian mode.-Deriving Lydian:Russell believed that...
(1959), the chord-scale system is now the, "most widely used method for teaching jazz improvisation
Jazz improvisation
Jazz improvisation is an important aspect of jazz. Basically, improvisation is composing on the spot and coming up with melodies off the top of one's head. Traditionally, jazz improvisation was distinguished from other forms of music improvisation by its chordal complexity, often exhibiting ii V...
in college". This approach is found in instructional books including Jerry Bergonzi
Jerry Bergonzi
Jerry Bergonzi is a jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and educator. Bergonzi received a B.A. Degree in Music Education from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and is the founder of Not Fat Records....
's Inside Improvisation series and characterized by the highly influential Play-A-Long series by Jamey Aebersold
Jamey Aebersold
Jamey Aebersold is an American jazz saxophonist and music educator. His "Play-A-Long" series of instructional book and CD collections, using the chord-scale system, the first of which was released in 1967, are an internationally renowned resource for jazz education...
. There are differences of approach within the system. For example, Russell associated the C major chord with the lydian scale, while teachers including John Mehegan, David Baker, and Mark Levine teach the major scale as the best match for a C major chord.
Miles Davis's Lydian Chromatic Concept-influenced first modal jazz
Modal jazz
Modal jazz is jazz that uses musical modes rather than chord progressions as a harmonic framework. Originating in the late 1950s and 1960s, modal jazz is characterized by Miles Davis's "Milestones" Kind of Blue and John Coltrane's classic quartet from 1960–64. Other important performers include...
album Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959...
, is often given as an example of chord-scale relationships in practice.
The chord-scale system provides familiarity with typical chord progressions, technical facility from practicing scales and chord arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
s, and generally succeeds in reducing "'clams'", or notes heard as mistakes (through providing note-choice possibilities for the chords of progressions), and building "'chops'", or virtuosity.
However, disadvantages include the exclusion of non-chord tones characteristic of bop and free styles, the 'in between' sounds featured in the blues, and consideration of directionality created between the interaction of a solo and a chord progression: "The disadvantages of this system may become clear when students begin to question why their own playing does not sound like such outstanding linear-oriented players as Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
, Sonny Stitt
Sonny Stitt
Edward "Sonny" Stitt was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was also one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums in his lifetime...
or Johnny Griffin
Johnny Griffin
John Arnold Griffin III was an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist.- Early life and career :Griffin studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago under Walter Dyett, starting out on clarinet before moving on to oboe and then alto sax...
(or, for that matter, the freer jazz stylists)":
The chord-scale method's 'vertical' approach...is 'static,' offering little assistance in generating musical direction through the movement of chords. But...Swing- and bop-era songforms operate teleologically with regard to harmony. Highly regarded soloists in those styles typically imply the movements of chords...either by creating lines that voice-lead smoothly from one chord to another or by confounding the harmony pull through anticipating or delaying harmonic resolution.
Essential considerations of a style such as Charlie Parker's including, "rhythm, phrase shape and length, dynamics, and tone color
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
," as well as "passing tones, appoggiatura, and 'blue note
Blue note
In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the...
s'" are unaddressed. This appears to have led educators to emphasize a specific repertoire of pieces most appropriate to the chord-scale system, such as John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
's "Giant Steps
Giant Steps
-Personnel:* John Coltrane — tenor saxophone* Tommy Flanagan — piano* Wynton Kelly — piano on "Naima"* Paul Chambers — bass* Art Taylor — drums* Jimmy Cobb — drums on "Naima"* Cedar Walton — piano on "Giant Steps' and Naima" alternate versions...
", while excluding others, such as Coltrane's later styles of composition, and producing generations of "pattern" players among college-educated musicians.
Further reading
- Yamaguchi, Masaya. 2006. The Complete Thesaurus of Musical Scales, revised edition. New York: Masaya Music Services. ISBN 0967635306.