>I have enjoyed this recent thread immensely. thanks for all the
>confessions. but richard: I still don't really understand your visualize
>a melodic minor scale and find the tritone/inverted triad that make up a
>viocing of some kind or other... would you clarify, please?
I'll try, but check out Mark Levine's books too.
The diminished whole-tone (or "altered" scale) is the seventh mode of the
melodic minor, and can be used with altered dominant chords.
You could argue that it's easier to think of it as the first four notes
of a diminished scale, followed by the last 4 of the whole tone scale.
Example: B altered is B C D D#/Eb F G A B (seventh mode of C melodic
minor). It has a b9, #9, #11 and b13 (or b9, #9, b5 and #5). Everything
possible is altered.
The Lydian dominant scale is the fourth mode of the melodic minor, and
can be used with dominant #11 chords.
Example: F Lydian dominant is F G A B C D Eb F (fourth mode of C melodic
minor)
The B is the #11.
As you probably know, tritone substitution works because F7 and B7 (roots
a tritone apart) also share a characteristic tritone interval (Eb A)
where the third and seventh of one chord is the seventh and third of the
other.
If we play the tritone interval (Eb A or A Eb) in the left hand, and add
a G triad in the right, we get nice rootless voicings for either F13
(#11) or B7alt:
Eb A D G B, or
Eb A B D G, or
A Eb G B D
So my little mental exercise was to visualize a particular melodic minor
scale, pick out the relevant tritone and triad, and think about what
chord I've got for each root/mode. This actually needn't be limited to
mode 4 and mode 7, but they seemed like a good start because
VII alt and IV 13(#11) are common dominant chords and can substitute for
each other.
In my original post, I added mode 6, the Locrian #2 scale, for m7b5
chords.
For example,
A B C D Eb F G A and Am7b5
The voicings above work for that too, as well as for Cm(maj7) (mode 1),
Dsusb9 (mode 2), and Ebmaj7#5 (mode 3).
Hope this helps,
Richard
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"It's no use prevaricating about the bush"
-- Wallace, in "The Wrong Trousers"
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