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Hey guys, Willie Myette, creator of jazz edge Welcome to Episode 28 of the confident improviser. Today we're talking about the eight
scales that you need to know for
improvisation. If you learn these eight
scales, you are going to be well situated to be able to create some killer solos. Remember, this podcast is a companion podcast for the confident improviser program, which is part of my jazz edge core courses, you can find more information back at jazz edge.com. Alright, so the sheet music is all available for my jazz edge students. So if you're a jazz edge student, go ahead and log in. It's underneath the lesson named eight
scales, you must know for
improvisation. So if you just search for eight
scales, the number eight you'll it will come up and you'll be able to find it. Alright, so the one
scale that I did not put on here, because it should be a pretty obvious
scale, but let's just make sure we're on the same page here is you have to know your major
scale, right? If you don't know your major
scale, then you have to make you really work that major
scale, you have to know all 12 of your major
scales. If you want to be able to improvise at the piano, you really have to be able to go through and play all 12 major
scales, hands together, you what you want to do is go through my piano essentials program, I lay it all out for you. It's all right there. So if you don't know your major
scales yet, just go and take a look at piano essentials. And you can find everything that you need for those
scales. Alright, so the first
scale here is the major pentatonic major pentatonic is a five note
scale. Now don't get confused. Sometimes when we come up to see, someone might say well wait a second, that's six notes while we're doubling the sea. So the notes are A, C, D, E, cross underneath your thumb, G, A with the second finger and then hit the C with your fourth finger or middle finger so it's 12312. And if you're going to keep going 1231212312 and so on for your finger right now this pentatonic
scale is super important because it is an extremely versatile
scale, in that you can use it for everything from jazz to rock pop, even classical to some degrees, right. So if I'm going to play like
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I just using that major pentatonic
scale, it's a sound that you know that you've heard before. But if you didn't know the notes there, there are the notes. So again, C major pentatonic C, D, E, and then G, A, and then finally C. It is the first, second, third, fifth and sixth notes from my major
scale. Now you'll see how I'm going to relate all of these
scales, all eight of these
scales back to the major
scale. That's why it's so important that you really know that major
scale so 12356 for the major
scale creates the major pentatonic
scale, the minor pentatonic
scale. So now there's two ways of looking at the minor pentatonic
scale the notes First of all, for C minor pentatonic are C, E flat, F, G, B flat, and in C. Right now, actually, as I was thinking, there's actually three ways in which you can look at this, it's kind of like a blue
scale with the missing sharp four. So if you know your blue
scale, you're just taking the sharp four out. So that's one way of seeing it. The other way of seeing it is that it is one flat 345 flat seven from the major
scale. But another way of thinking about it is to go back to the relative major of your minor key so if it's C minor, the relative major of C minor is E flat. Remember, an easy trick to find the relative major is start with C minor, and you should know the notes your C minor chord C, E flat and G just go to the third which is E flat Look, there you go. E flat is your relative major. So if you go to the third of your minor chord, right, the flat three of your minor chord that is your relative major. So E flat major, notice what you have here these notes E flat major pentatonic is E flat, F, G, B flat, and C. Okay, so E flat, F, G, B flat C. Now if I start those notes on C, well guess what? There's my C minor pentatonic
scale. Now this
scale right here is super, super versatile. You hear this and rock, even heavy metal and you hear it in jazz all the time.
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Great sound write the notes once again, and fingering. See with the thumb a flat with the second finger, F with the middle finger cross underneath g with the thumb, B flat with the second finger, and then C with the middle finger. So C minor pentatonic
scale works great over minor
chords, you could use it over actually many different types of
chords, even suspended
chords, dominant
chords, so learn this
scale, and then we will be talking more about it in the confident improviser program, how to utilize these
scales. All right. All right, the next
scale up is our blue
scale. So it's the same thing as the minor pentatonic
scale, we're just adding in that sharp four, right? So the notes are C, E, flat, F, F sharp with the fourth finger, and cross underneath g with the thumb, B flat with the second finger, and then C with the middle finger. Our blues, pretty common, you've probably already heard about the blues
scale, you might even already know the notes if you don't know the notes. Again, it's C, E, flat, F, F sharp, G, B, flat, C. Right, these work great for minor
chords or dominant
chords, very, very versatile
scale. Alright, moving on the altered
scale. Now I have a whole bunch of tutorials on the site for altered
scale. So if you just type in the word altered,
scale into the search box, a lot of stuff is going to come up. Alright, so the altered
scale, let's go through what the notes are. It's C, D flat, a flat, E, natural, G flat, a flat, B flat, and c, this is the same thing as a D flat melodic minor
scale, starting on C. Alright, like I said, I have a bunch of tutorials on the site for it. So just take a look at what's on the site. And it's all explained in detail, I just want to get through these
scales for you right now. And that take up a bunch of time. Alright. So C, D flat, E flat, E natural, right. So right there, I like to break this
scale up into two parts, the first four notes, and the second four notes, the first four notes have the, the root and the major third in them. So C and E, and then also flat nine and sharp, that really, really important to see this, okay, because right here, you have the root and the third, right, we already know about our chord shells, right root three chord show. So you get the main notes of the chord right there, that root and the third, but then you have flat nine sharp nine, so you get a bunch of tension right there, no natural nine in the
scale. And then the top four notes are the same four notes from your whole tone
scale, it's all whole steps coming down from C. So C, D flat, a flat, G flat. So we have C, D flat, E flat, cross underneath with the thumb, E, natural, G flat, a flat, B flat C. fingering of this
scale, is the same as C major. So 12312345. All I'm doing here in the left hand is playing a root three, seven
chords, C, E, B flat. Running that
scale up and down. I suggest that you do this with all of these
scales, take a look at the sheet music here that you know you have a chord in the left hand, play the chord, run the
scale up and down. And of course, take a look at that lesson for some more ideas. Okay, half whole diminished a real great jazzy
scale. Now, what's interesting on the half whole diminished is it's the same first four notes as your altered
scale, right? So C, D flat, E flat, E natural, but then we go F sharp, then g natural, a natural, B flat C. That's interesting, because it is a 12345678. note
scale. Most of our
scales are seven notes, right, except for the pentatonic, which is five. This is an eight note
scale, fingering for this 123, cross underneath one, two, and then 123.
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So the notes of this
scale, it's the same thing as the root of the major
scale flat nine, or flat two, sharp, nine, three, flat five, natural five, natural six, flat seven, and then roots, right, so again, the notes are C, C, sharp, D, sharp, E, F, sharp, G, A, B, flat, C. Now this is a great
scale to play over dominant seventh
chords as well. And it's really, really important to take a look at what is the similarities and differences between these
scales. This is how you're really going to lock this knowledge in, you're really going to start to understand them. A lot better. So the first four notes, right, like I said, the first four notes of the altered
scale in this half whole diminished
scale are exactly the same, you got the root and the third in there, the C and the E. But then you also have flat nine sharp, nine, D flat, and D sharp. The top four or five notes in this case, right are different. For the altered
scale, you have sharp 11, flat, 13, flat seven, and then your roots. For the half whole diminished, you have sharp 11 513, flat seven, and the root. So if you're not going to alter the 13th, if you're going to keep a natural 13, and your chord, this
scale works perfectly for this. Okay, next
scale up the whole half diminished
scale, this is the
scale that you use over diminished
chords, right? This
scale starts Oh, the other thing I forgot to tell you the half whole diminished
scale, right? That we just did, right over the dominant. Remember, to form that
scale, it's really simple, you start on C, then go up a half step and go up a whole step and go up a half step and go up a whole step, then a half and a whole and a half, then a you know, right, so it's a very symmetrical pattern there. Same thing for the whole half, you start on C, then you go on the whole step, that a half step, then a whole step, then a half step, then a whole step, half step, whole step. Okay, so the notes are C, D, E, flat, crossing nice with the thumb, F, F sharp, with the second finger, G sharp with the middle finger, cross underneath with the thumb, again, A, B, then finally, the C.
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This is the
scale, the
scale that you use over these diminished
chords. So whole half diminished
scale, super important if you want to be able to improvise over those diminished
chords. All right, seven, whole tone
scale. This one is great over dominant
chords, especially dominant
chords with a sharp five in them, right. And literally all it is, all this whole steps starting from C. So go C, D, E, F, sharp, G, sharp, B flat, and C, right, or C, D, E, G flat, a flat, B, flat C, fingering Wise One, two cross underneath 1234, and then 121234. This is also a great scatter, to play different patterns, to create these different
triads on the
scale. Kind of like some
scale chords, take a look, do a search for
scale chords and site if you need more information on what those are. Alright, and then finally, our locrian natural nine
scale, so are locrian
scale, we've, we haven't talked about the locrian
scale, the locrian
scale is a D flat major
scale starting on C so it'd be C, D flat, E flat, F, G flat, a flat, B flat C, there was an a note of my locrian
scale, the locrian natural nine just takes that flat nine, the D flat and plays it as a D natural. So now the notes that you have are C, D, E flat, F, G flat, a flat, B flat, C. So this is the route second flat 311 or four, flat five, flat six, flat seven. From the major
scale, this
scale works especially well over minor seven flat five
chords. Now typically on a minor seven flat five chord, the ninth can be a little bit tricky, sometimes flat nine works better than natural night, it's really going to depend on the song and you're going to have to use your ears for that. But guess what, you can just leave the nine out altogether, right?
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So if you're unsure, just leave the nine out. But when you are approaching a minor seven flat five chord, nine times out of 10 that natural nine is going to sound better than flat. Especially when you're dealing with your chord voicings. That flat nine is gonna rub against the route. Alright, so this is your locrian natural nines. So now the question becomes, okay, how do I practice these
scales? How much do I practice them? How do I apply them to my playing and all of that. So what I would say is Be patient go through the confident improviser program we are going to be moving into the
scales, right. So I'm kind of preparing you with this podcast episode to kind of know about these
scales because we're going to start Talk about the
scales and starts to talk about how we bring them into our
improvisation. But a great way to start is take a look at that lesson. Eight
scales, you need to know for
improvisation. All right, so take a look at that lesson, I give you a bunch of different suggestions in there. But one of the best things to do is just simply play a chord in the left hand and run the
scale on the right hand just to get comfortable with it and to feel natural. So let me do my whole tone. Do my half whole diminished. me do my altered, right, so I just want to get comfortable playing that
scale. So that's the best place to start. As usual, if you have questions, and you're a member of jazzercise, be sure to join me every other Thursday for my live q&a session at 1pm. All right, so that's it for me. Thanks, guys for joining me and I'll see you guys in the next lesson.