How Many Scales Do You Really Need to Know?

Jazz musicians need to know a lot of scales in order to improvise.

Meh... “need” is a little dramatic.

There have been plenty of legendary soloists in days gone by that weren’t especially familiar with music theory. Stan Getz and Chet Baker come to mind.

Anyway, the first jazz scale I ever learned was the blues scale. A few years later, my teacher taught me bebop scales.

Here’s a quick refresher:

Major 7 Bebop Scale: 1 2 3 4 5 b6 6 7

Dominant 7 Bebop Scale: 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 7

Minor 7 Bebop Scale: 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7 7

Each bebop scale has eight notes, and therein lies the magic…by adding an extra note to the traditional Ionian, Dorian, and Mixolydian seven-note scales, the chord tones end up landing on downbeats.

Check out these two examples:

Pay attention to the downbeats (indicated by the arrows) and the chord tones (in red).

The second scale is a bebop scale. The chord tones align with the downbeats thanks to that extra note – the b6.

But the story continues...

Once I learned these scales, I was super excited to start getting that more advanced jazz sound I was after.

But things didn’t pan out the way I wanted.

My improvised solos ended up sounding like I was just practicing a bunch of scales.

Not good.

Later I realized that I was better off using the scales not to come up with solos, but to understand and help me memorize jazz lines that actually sounded good.

Which brings me to today’s advice:

When you’re playing through and working towards internalizing your favorite lines from Licks for Days and Tastiest Blues Licks You’ve Ever Heard, don’t just read the notes off the page.

Instead, look for familiar scales and arpeggios. You can even make some annotations on the sheet music. That's right – bracket off and circle the note combinations that align with the music theory you've learned.

Because the more you analyze, the faster your new jazz and blues vocabulary will make its way into your solos organically and musically.

Good luck!

Jeff