# Whole tone scale



## AvantGuardian (Mar 31, 2009)

Anyone care to talk about how they use the whole tone scale or recommend any songs to listen to that use the whole tone scale? This is one of the scales that I just really have a hard time trying to make music with. Its a cool sounding scale when I play it up and down, but I just dont know what to do with it. The lack of any half steps or perfect fifths really throws me off, not to mention the symmetry. Obviously the end result will be kind of atonal sounding, but how do you guys approach it?

Preferably I'd like to know about its uses outside of jazz. I realize that there are times in jazz where this scale would really work over certain chords, but I'm not a jazz player and I don't anticipate soloing over and 7#5#11 chords in the near future.


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## ShadyDavey (Mar 31, 2009)

There are a few pieces which utilise the whole-tone scale (and I admit to googling a lot of these):



Béla Bartók
 _String Quartet No. 5_ 

Dream Theater
 _Overture 1928_ 

Alban Berg
 _Violin Concerto__Nacht_ from "Seven Early Songs" 

Ferruccio Busoni
 _An die Jugend_ for piano, the right hand part of the "Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esercizio" is based on the whole tone scale. 

Claude Debussy
 _Voiles_ from Preludes, Book 1 

King Crimson
 FractureRed 

Kraftwerk
 Spacelab (from The Man-Machine) 

Liars
 "Tumbling Walls Buried Me in the Debris With Esg" 

Olivier Messiaen
 Quartet for the End of Time (movement 6, "Danse of Fury, for the seven trumpets") 

Mirrors and Copulation
 "I Took Care of my Parents" 

Maurice Ravel
 "Jeux d'Eau"

As well as Glinka, Mussogorsky, Borodin, Scriabin etc However aside from providing examples of its useage I can only add a couple of situations where you might use it for a solo, specifically:

Harmonising a Whole tone scale produces Augmented triads - those are your prime candidates as they do occour in metal from time to time, or over the chords you mentioned.

Its not a scale I've had masses of experience with aside from taking a solo "out" now and then. I was probably guilty of never playing it slowly enough to really use its melodic/harmonic potential. 

I dug out a couple of links/quotes if they're of any help:

Scherzi: The Whole-Tone Scale and Augmented Chords
whole tone scale - hobby



> There are only two whole tone scales.
> If you play them on a dominant chord the one that has the root gives you: R, 9, 3, +11, +5 and b7.
> If you play the other scale starting on the b9 you get: b9, +9, 11, 5, 13 and Maj7. So in theory you can use either one, although the Maj7 can sound weird I've found it can work well over dominants and give you a bluesy color.
> Use your ears and experiment.



All of the above is stuff you probably already knew so sorry if thats not particularly helpful - I'm sure there are a couple of folks who can spread more light on the subject.


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## scott from _actual time_ (Mar 31, 2009)

AvantGuardian said:


> recommend any songs to listen to that use the whole tone scale? This is one of the scales that I just really have a hard time trying to make music with. ... The lack of any half steps or perfect fifths really throws me off, not to mention the symmetry. Obviously the end result will be kind of atonal sounding, but how do you guys approach it?


the _actual time_ song "holes" on the _actual time_ MySpace page is written in the whole tone scale. 

for metal that scale only sounds partly atonal because it does include the flat fifth, which is common in metal. most of the chords in that song were either root-flat fifth-octave "power chords" or stacked root-M3 combinations. that and the neat slidy riff i think fit well.

in the solo, i was just trying to come up with a neat melody using the whole tone notes, and fit it in the 5:4 time signature. i'm not a great soloist by any means, but i think it came out pretty well.

so i think overall, just try moving around within the notes that that scale limits you to and see what you can come up with. if it's just not happening, that's cool; you can just pick a different scale to use.


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## distressed_romeo (Mar 31, 2009)

Check out Ron Jarzombek's solo on Watchtower's 'The Eldritch'. There's a very cool whole-tone-based legato lick in there!

One thing to remember about the way jazz guys use it, is that it's not just something to play over 7#5 chords; a lot of the time they'll use it as an outside sound over static vamps.

At the risk of sounding slapdash, it's a great one to whip out when you just need to inject some atonal craziness into a tune!


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## Rachmaninoff (Mar 31, 2009)

_Overture 1928_, from Dream Theater, uses the whole tone scale on some riffs.
Take a listen at it.


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## AvantGuardian (Mar 31, 2009)

Cool, thanks for all the replies! I gave the Actual Time song a listen and I think it might be worth a little further study when I have the time. As a big DT fan, I'll have to dive into Overture 1928 as well to dig out the whole tone parts. The classical/20th century pieces are actually intriguing as well. Sounds like a weekend of whole tone study is shaping up here!


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## liquidcow (Apr 1, 2009)

ShadyDavey said:


> Béla Bartók
> _String Quartet No. 5_




The article there says that the keys ascend in the whole tone scale, which isn't the same thing as the piece actually being in the whole tone scale, just that it starts in Bb, then moves to C, then D, and so on. Bartok's quite interesting though in that he used atonal composition a lot later on in his career - atonal not in the sense that it sounds dissonant but in the sense that there is no defined key signature.


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## ShadyDavey (Apr 1, 2009)

You could always try posting links at that time in the evening and see if you want to read _every single one_ instead of speed-surfing in order to try to get some information 

I know Bartok reasonably well so I know about his atonal compositions (atonal theory makes for some interesting reading) but that piece is another way to use the whole-tone scale compositionally so I thought it might be worthwhile to include it. 

There's some whole-tone licks (or perhaps one) on George Lynch's instructional video but essentiall its limited to the B and G strings in this kind of manner:

B1-3-5-----5-7-9-----
G-----1-3-5-----5-7-9

Interspersed with some position shifts. Thats probably not 100&#37; accurate but its close although not particularly noteworthy compared to Mr Jarzombek.


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## scott from _actual time_ (Apr 1, 2009)

AvantGuardian said:


> I gave the Actual Time song a listen and I think it might be worth a little further study when I have the time.


cool--glad it had some worth for you.

unlike some of these other examples, it is entirely in the whole tone scale--the entire song, the solo, every single note. so it gives a much stronger flavor for that mode's atonality.


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## ShadyDavey (Apr 1, 2009)

Its hard to use the whole tone scale (without it sounding too outside for comfort) over an entire song but thats a good attempt at it  (Definately hearing those Spastic Ink influences ).


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## scott from _actual time_ (Apr 1, 2009)

ShadyDavey said:


> Its hard to use the whole tone scale (without it sounding too outside for comfort) over an entire song but thats a good attempt at it  (Definately hearing those Spastic Ink influences ).



yeah--any time you limit yourself beforehand to a only a certain set of notes or a certain anything else, the results are going to sound somewhat out. but it's a neat way to approach things if that sort of geekery is your thing. (the other song on the _actual time_ MySpace, "out there," is written around a rhythm in prime numbers.  )


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 2, 2009)

There's that one Stevie Wonder song...

My treatment of symmetric scales is to create a sense of extreme harmonic motion, as you can string together a number of unrelated chords and find these scales nested within. Check this out: F and A are two major chords a major third away. When you order their pitches, you get this: F G A C C# E

Here's whole tone on F: F G A B C# D#

Similar enough, no? Anyway, that's my approach: derive the melody from harmony. Octatonic scales are a bit easier to find.


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