# Comprehensive guide to Scales and what Chords they fit over...



## Adeamus (Mar 1, 2012)

Heya guys

So I was just sitting around practicing up some licks and thinking about my improvisation skills. They have gotten better with time, but I still feel as though its one of the spots I'm the most lacking in.

Now I teach a fair amount of guitar lessons and I've realized over time that I don't know much as far as what scales fit over what chords. Obviously I know the common stuff of "Diatonic scales work with the diatonic chords" and how to substitute dorian over minor stuff, or lydian over major. But once it becomes more exotic then that, perhaps a Harmonic Minor over the dominant 7th, my knowledge quickly evaporates.

Anyone have a good resource on what modes/arpeggios/synthetic scales work over what chords? Learning how to effectively use all the bizarre scales seems like a good use of my time.

Thanks much


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## Stealthdjentstic (Mar 1, 2012)

E Aeolian Scale

Sort of...they have a chord one too.


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## Adeamus (Mar 1, 2012)

Stealthdjentstic said:


> E Aeolian Scale
> 
> Sort of...they have a chord one too.



This is actually super awesome. But its a bit overwhelming, do you know of any guides that have a smaller learning curve?


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## Stealthdjentstic (Mar 1, 2012)

Just change the scale to whatever you want and the key to the key of the song.

So if you're jamming on a blues track in E:

Change it to say...pentatonic or aeolian and change the key to E


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 1, 2012)

Do you know how to analyze a chord or scale based on its intervallic content? For example, an F major scale, F G A Bb C D E, is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. An Fmaj7 chord (or F&#8710;, if you prefer) is F A C E, which fits into that scale as 1 3 5 7. Gm7 (G Bb D F) also fits in there as 2 4 6 1. The whole ideas is to see these relationships. Anyway, this is what happens when you alter degrees - lets do F dorian, F G Ab Bb C D Eb, 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7. Now, 1 b3 5 b7 is F Ab C Eb, or Fm7.

Exotic scales work on the same principle. Let's do G Hungarian minor, G A Bb C# D Eb F#, 1 2 b3 #4 5 b6 7. Our tonic chord, Gm&#8710; (Gm/Maj7), is G Bb D F#. Don't forget that there are other chords that exist in all of these scales. b3 5 7 2 gives us Bb+&#8710; (Bbaug/Maj7). As for comprehensive lists and such, they're mostly a waste of time. As soon as you know how to build chords and scales, you'll have all of the materials you need at your disposal in an infinitely flexible manner.


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## Solodini (Mar 1, 2012)

What he said. Develop a good vocabulary of intervallic relationships and use that to help you. Try to improve at it by subtracting notes from a scale to make various chords, rather than trying to find scales to fit over chords. The relationships you discover will be much more recognisable within the harmony of a piece, thus more quickly applied, and it should be easier to see a similar scale and know more quickly what chords will likely fit with it, and vice versa.


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## AxeHappy (Mar 4, 2012)

Buy this:

The Guitar Grimoire - Scales and Modes


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## Solodini (Mar 4, 2012)

Uh oh, SW's gonna kill somebody!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 4, 2012)

AxeHappy said:


> Buy this:
> 
> The Guitar Grimoire - Scales and Modes





I don't like that book. Adam Kadmon wants every guitarist in the world to be a slave to the diagrams.


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## SirMyghin (Mar 4, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> I don't like that book. Adam Kadmon wants every guitarist in the world to be a slave to the diagrams.




Pretty much, it should be titled the lazy guitarists guide to hand holding. A rather terrible and useless piece of work there, much like the 'guitar chord encyclopedia' and their like.  The second you understand what a chord is, or harmonize a scale, all of those 'resources' are revealed as the tripe they are. I feel like chord construction is the best kept secret of guitar literature some days.


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## morrowcosom (Mar 5, 2012)

Harmonizer (beta) 

Click on the link. It will answer precisely what you asked.


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## noUser01 (Mar 5, 2012)

The Jazz Theory Book also known as The Jazz Piano Book (almost the EXACT same book, really) is excellent. Don't be put off by the word jazz, it's completely usable for rock, I get my stuff from that. It shows you exactly that, what scales fit over what chords nicely. Sure it has Emi7b9 as one of the chords, but really you could play it's corresponding scale over any minor chord, the 7b9 merely brings out the colors of the scale a bit more than using it over Em or even an E power chord.

Just some brush up for you...

Now technically any major scale will fit well over and major chord, same for minor, diminished etc. For example: Over a major chord (let's choose C major) you can play C Ionian (major scale), Lydian, Mixolydian, Harmonic Major, etc. because they are all "major" scales.

EDIT: The same rules also apply to arpeggios. Major chords go with any sort of major arpeggio.

A good rule of thumb for scales and arpeggios is that any scale works as long as you aren't playing notes a half step down or up from any note in the chord you're playing over. (Don't play a G# on a C major chord with the notes CEG, it'll sound dissonant and WRONG) That being said there are exceptions to every rules, which is why the major scale goes with a major chord even though the 4th and 7th notes in the major scale clash with the 3rd and root in the chord. These notes are called "avoid notes". Now this is a utterly TERRIBLE form of musical jargon that we are unfortunately stuck with. Why is it a bad way to say it? Because it's incorrect. So much of music is about tension and release, playing a 4 on a major chord is gonna create tension and dissonance, which is GOOD as long as you know how to properly resolve it and not hang on the note constantly. They are "handle with care" notes really. 

Does that help? Any questions just let me know.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 6, 2012)

This is my opinion: matching scales to chords is the wrong way to go about music. It works in the short run, in that you'll have notes that match the chord and don't sound too out (Unless you pick one of those scales that only works on paper but actually sounds like shit 99% of the time; a square peg/round hole situation.). It's heavier stuff, but learning functional harmony in the major/minor tonal system is a better foundation.


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## noUser01 (Mar 6, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> This is my opinion: matching scales to chords is the wrong way to go about music. It works in the short run, in that you'll have notes that match the chord and don't sound too out (Unless you pick one of those scales that only works on paper but actually sounds like shit 99% of the time; a square peg/round hole situation.). It's heavier stuff, but learning functional harmony in the major/minor tonal system is a better foundation.



Although I disagree, this is a perfectly good point. 

I would say that yes, you should match chords to scales and find out what scales work with what chords because when you want options you'll have them right there to work from in an easy manner. That being said I think you should do that AFTER doing what SW has recommended. Explore everything you can do within a major/minor context, study about writing in modes of the major scale, implying certain modes in different contexts, etc. It is harder to understand but will take you farther. Though I still say learning odd scales and modes and matching them to specific chords is valuable. Do both.

Basically what I'm saying is SW is right, but don't rule out either. Learn both.


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## phrygian12 (Mar 7, 2012)

SchecterWhore, should write a book and title it " Diatonic Theory 101" 
Chapter1: Understanding enharmonics
Chapter2: Understanding scales 
Chapter3: How to make a Triad
Chapter4: How to make chord extensions
Chapter5: Learning interval relationships Horizontally and vertically
Final Chapter: Learning how to create a chord progression out of scales. 
Ending chapter: ...FUCK..

Book Two " Modal Composition 101" 

Jk, but honestly it'd be pretty cool.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 7, 2012)

I've attempted writing a book a few times before. The toughest part is the first chapter, and I've never been happy with any of the first chapters that I've cranked out. However, I've gained some interesting perspectives on teaching beginners in the past couple of months and I'm itching to incorporate some new ideas into my lessons and hopefully get a book off the ground.


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## Adam Of Angels (Mar 7, 2012)

ConnorGilks said:


> That being said there are exceptions to every rules, which is why the major scale goes with a major chord even though the 4th and 7th notes in the major scale clash with the 3rd and root in the chord.



? The 3rd and root note of a major chord are in the major scale - the chord is derived from the scale to begin with


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## noUser01 (Mar 7, 2012)

Adam Of Angels said:


> ? The 3rd and root note of a major chord are in the major scale - the chord is derived from the scale to begin with



That's exactly my point... ? I never said they weren't.

Like I said, there are exceptions to the rule of "as long as you're a whole step away from a chord tone". I was using the major scale as an example. The chord is OBVIOUSLY derived from that scale, but then the obvious question after learning that "rule" is "Then why does the major scale have notes right next to it's chord tones?" I then explained that by the theory of avoid notes.

I'm not sure what else you want me to say, I'm making the exact same point you are.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 7, 2012)

ConnorGilks said:


> Like I said, there are exceptions to the rule of "as long as you're a whole step away from a chord tone". I was using the major scale as an example. The chord is OBVIOUSLY derived from that scale, but then the obvious question after learning that "rule" is "Then why does the major scale have notes right next to it's chord tones?" I then explained that by the theory of avoid notes.



I disagree with this. I understand where you're coming from, but it's wrong. Unless you're dealing with an augmented triad, you will always run into problems by trying to avoid half steps between other chord tones.

A+ = A C# E#, you can get B and D# in there and still have a major second between the non-harmonic tone and any chord tone.
A = A C# E, you can get B in there, and... Uh-oh. D won't work, because it's a half step above C#, and D# won't work because it's a half step below E. You'll run into the same problem with minor triads, and you can forget diminished chords. At this point, you have two solutions: write music that consists entirely of augmented triads, or accept that it's a silly premise if you have to say that the exceptions far outweigh the rule.

I don't agree with most jazz "theory" out there, chord-scale theory especially, and there are very few instances in the development of jazz music where chord-scale relationships had anything to do with anything. The exception, of course, is Miles Davis' modal period (when they weren't using functional chords), but the entire point of that was that _there was no dissonance_ because _they weren't worried about dissonance_. Modal thinking and harmonic thinking are separate entities.


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## noUser01 (Mar 7, 2012)

If you'll read my post again I never said that you should avoid those notes completely. Yes they are called avoid notes, yes I said a general rule is any note a whole step away from a chord tone works, but as I said that's a very basic understanding and blanket statement that you then work from by adding in notes that ARE a half step away and then learn to use them properly. How to resolve them or keep them unresolved but in a way that sounds like you meant to keep it unresolved.

It's not wrong. It's an oversimplified rule to get the basic understanding of why certain scales or notes don't work, then from there we learn how minor second intervals DO work against chord tones.


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## edsped (Mar 7, 2012)

Minor 2nds and b9s don't need to be avoided entirely; it's obviously okay to use them in passing but landing on one of those tensions (especially a b9) typically won't sound good.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 7, 2012)

It seems to me that "avoid tone" is a bad word. It makes it sound like you should stay away from those notes altogether, and that you have to tiptoe when you are using them. "Dissonance" is a much better word, as it is neutral in its definition and begs further contemplation, allowing the musician to figure it out for their self. I don't get why people try to supplant ideas with lesser ideas that try to accomplish the same thing. There was an entire system devoted to the treatment of dissonance long before Mark Levine and Jamey Aebersold came along.


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## noUser01 (Mar 7, 2012)

edsped said:


> Minor 2nds and b9s don't need to be avoided entirely; it's obviously okay to use them in passing but landing on one of those tensions (especially a b9) typically won't sound good.



Well yes, that is another general rule. But a lot of the time it does sound good (like on a 7b9 chord, it sounds great) or you can land on it and hold it for a while if you want, and then resolve to the root.

SW: Yes there was, and it worked, until people started realizing that playing a tritone would not summon the devil or kill others.  Times change and so does music, so must the theory.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 7, 2012)

ConnorGilks said:


> SW: Yes there was, and it worked, until people started realizing that playing a tritone would not summon the devil or kill others.  Times change and so does music, so must the theory.



"Resolve to a chord tone" is not a new concept. And tritones have been nice for the majority of tonal history. Build on what you have. No need to reject the old system, only to rewrite it.


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## noUser01 (Mar 8, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> "Resolve to a chord tone" is not a new concept. And tritones have been nice for the majority of tonal history. Build on what you have. No need to reject the old system, only to rewrite it.



The MAJORITY being the key word here. Reminding us that the system hasn't been set in stone forever. New things come along in music and the theory will change with it. It's not rejecting any old system, simply adding more to it.


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## Trespass (Mar 8, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> This is my opinion: matching scales to chords is the wrong way to go about music. It works in the short run, in that you'll have notes that match the chord and don't sound too out (Unless you pick one of those scales that only works on paper but actually sounds like shit 99% of the time; a square peg/round hole situation.). It's heavier stuff, but learning functional harmony in the major/minor tonal system is a better foundation.



Exactly. 

There are two competing/complimentary approaches to this idea.

*Chord Scale Soloing:* The chord suggests one type of harmony, you can choose from one of several groups of scales to play over top. This is usually dependent on the progression.

i.e. On a basic C triad, you can play C Ionian, C Lydian, Lydian Dominant, Mixolydian, hell, pretty much anything that has a E and a G in it. 

However: If the C is immediately followed by a F triad, playing a C scale that has a major 7th isn't going to have as much tonal gravity/tonal pull to that F triad. In traditional harmony, not having a dominant to tonic resolution would be a bad thing. In modern harmony, anything goes - It becomes more textural, longer arcs of tension and release.

*Chord Tone Soloing:* You think of playing chords over chords. 

Over a C triad, if I play a Em7, I imply a Cmaj7th sound.
If I play a Em7b5, I imply a C9 sound.
If I play a C#dim, I imply a C7b9 sound.


In Chord Tone Soloing, it becomes more about connecting intervallic structures over a given harmony than finding the right scale for the right chord. 

In reality, I mix the two approaches. They both offer a complimentary idea: I have pools of notes to improvise with, and I kind of know what kind of sound they will produce. 

*What matters to the listener:* Melody and texture.

These two concepts produce different voice leading and different textures. Mixing both will break up the monotony of improvised/written solos that are too scalar, too arpeggio-y, too sparse, too dense. 


*My approach-*


I see everything as general chordal harmony. If I play x over y, it produces this harmonic sound. 



Over an Am7, I might play from the following note pools:

Pentatonic Scale Choices:
Am7 (Diatonic Am sound)
Bm7 (Diatonic Am sound, highlights extensions - Sounds distant from tonic)
Em7 (Diatonic Am sound, not as distant from tonic)
Am7b5 (Blues pentatonic without the 5th)
Japanese pent (I forget the name - 1 b2 4 5 b7)

Arpeggios:
Diatonic Am pool (Am, Am7, Am11, Am13) (Very safe)
A melodic minor pool (Am, AmMaj7, AmMaj9, AmMaj11) (Safer tension, cool sound)
G melodic minor pool (GmMaj9 is as far as I go) (Very tense Am13b9 sound)
Am9b5 pool (Am7b5, Am9b5, AmMaj9b5) (Very tense, a bit safer than G melodic minor pool)
AdimMaj7 (Much cooler alternative to straight diminished, symmetrical, lends itself to sequencing very well)

Diatonic Quartal and Quintal Outlines:
An alternative texture to the vanilla tertial sound. Outline diatonic scales (A dorian is probably the easiest over an Am7) in quartal and quintal intervals. Safe, but distant from the grounded sound. Ambiguous.

Sidestepping: 
All of the above can be played a semitone above or below the target. Bbm13 pool over Am7, for example. Very tense, used entirely as a vehicle for tension, not to highlight different harmony.

Scales: (I don't use these very much)
A dorian
A melodic minor
Whole Tone
Diminished Scale (I use this very rarely unless it's free jazz or metal)
Double Harmonic minor/generally ethnic sounding scales 

Chromatics:
General chromatic playing within one of the above structures. So I might play a chromatic scale that lines up with a pentatonic scale on the downbeats. Just another texture. 

Also saves my ass if I lose where I am if I play something that doesn't voice lead well into the next chord. This is a bad habit.

------

There are more that I haven't mentioned. I don't want to give it all away 

Specific intervallic structures I use that are made up, or I've found in common jazz voicings that I'll take out of context. The typical stringset 1-4 rootless dominant 7 #11 voicing is something I'll also play over m7 chords, launching off of the root, the 6th, and other places within the scale that implies different extensions/tensions of a chord.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 8, 2012)

ConnorGilks said:


> The MAJORITY being the key word here. Reminding us that the system hasn't been set in stone forever. New things come along in music and the theory will change with it. It's not rejecting any old system, simply adding more to it.



You're missing the point here. Music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. When people didn't favor tritones (because it presented problems in one- and two-voice vocal music), that was hundreds of years ago and is noted as an element of that style rather than a "rule". And, yes, they still used tritones in melodies (not harmonies, as we are accustomed to today, because they had not yet developed harmony), but they did it to achieve a specific effect. You still have composers today that do the same thing, because that tritone sound is very effective at sounding like a tritone. Go to the movies and see what I mean. My commentary relates to the pedagogy and not to the content of musical study.


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## Trespass (Mar 8, 2012)

edsped said:


> Minor 2nds and b9s don't need to be avoided entirely; it's obviously okay to use them in passing but landing on one of those tensions (especially a b9) typically won't sound good.



Voicing b9s in your chords is a legitimate sound. A lot of the voicings used by guys post-Rosenwinkel (i.e. Kreisberg, Hekselman, Monder etc.) feature b9s in their voicings of vanilla chords. Ben Monders maj7 natural 4 (voiced with the third above the natural 4) produces a b9, for example.

It's another way to control tension and release, and another pallet in voicing chords. If I were to throw together the different ways you can voice chords really quickly, I'd say something like

Rooted Tertial
Rootless Tertial
Quartal
Quintal
Clusters (groups of seconds, partial chords [over a m7, playing 2, b3, 5])
Upper Structure Triads (always played in second inversion, producing a strong 4th plus 3rd)
Tertial voicings with flat 9ths


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## noUser01 (Mar 8, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> You're missing the point here. Music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. When people didn't favor tritones (because it presented problems in one- and two-voice vocal music), that was hundreds of years ago and is noted as an element of that style rather than a "rule". And, yes, they still used tritones in melodies (not harmonies, as we are accustomed to today, because they had not yet developed harmony), but they did it to achieve a specific effect. You still have composers today that do the same thing, because that tritone sound is very effective at sounding like a tritone. Go to the movies and see what I mean. My commentary relates to the pedagogy and not to the content of musical study.




To be honest I think we're just talking circles around eachother. We seem to have the same understanding of music but different opinions, neither of which is more right or wrong than the other.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 8, 2012)

Perhaps. However, arguments are the best part of music; without them, music sucks.


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## Adam Of Angels (Mar 8, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> Perhaps. However, arguments are the best part of music; without them, music sucks.



I love music, and it has nothing to do with arguments. If this comment went over my head, then nevermind


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## noUser01 (Mar 8, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> Perhaps. However, arguments are the best part of music; without them, music sucks.



No mate, Celine Dion is what makes music suck. 

(Kidding of course )


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 9, 2012)

No argument there. See? My theory checks out.


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## edsped (Mar 9, 2012)

Trespass said:


> Voicing b9s in your chords is a legitimate sound. A lot of the voicings used by guys post-Rosenwinkel (i.e. Kreisberg, Hekselman, Monder etc.) feature b9s in their voicings of vanilla chords. Ben Monders maj7 natural 4 (voiced with the third above the natural 4) produces a b9, for example.
> 
> It's another way to control tension and release, and another pallet in voicing chords. If I were to throw together the different ways you can voice chords really quickly, I'd say something like
> 
> ...


What I meant was if you're soloing over a progression of some kind then usually you aren't gonna want to land on a b9 unless you specifically want that kind of tension. Basically it's highly dissonant and should be used with care.


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