An introduction to symmetrical scales for guitar guitar. I suggest to use it just on the dominant 7th chord. The whole tone scale consists of note a whole step apart. Constructing the scale is rather simplesix wholesteps and youre there. In this lesson, you will learn how to build the whole tone scale and apply it to your jazz guitar playing.
Since there are only two possible wholetonescale positions that is, the wholetone scale can be transposed only once, it is either c2 0 or c2 1. The wholetone scale can be used to add tensions to your jazz guitar improvisations over. Major and minor scales consists of 7 notes, while pentatonic scales are made of 5 notes. The scale is built by using one interval, a tone, between each note. After learning strumming chords, the most common step for beginners is to begin practicing single note melodies, and knowing your guitar scales is a huge help for this task. Click here for a free printable high quality pdf file of this guitar scale. Example guitar solo incorporating wholetone scales.
Hi, what guitar is that hanging above the light switch on the top right. The wholetone scale is an elusive and, for most musicians, problematic series of notes. As the name suggests, the whole tone scale is constructed purely from whole steps 2 frets. Free guitar scales ebook scale and arpeggio patterns pdf. Half tone, whole tone, minor third, and major third are the building blocks of the scales in this book. But if we find one of the other chords in a typical song in c major, a very common one is g7. The whole tone scale is a sixnote or hexatonic scale. The composer olivier messiaen called the wholetone scale his first mode of limited transposition. The whole half step formula is similar to the scale formulas only it uses whole and half steps to explain the construction of a scale. The wholetone scale is a great scale to learn if you want to add some crunch to your lines. Every note in a whole tone scale is the same distance from its neighbor as the name suggests, the interval between each note is a whole tone. List of pieces which use the whole tone scale wikipedia.
In this short scale tutorial we will be discussing the whole tone scale. Printable pdf ebook method containing 40 major jazz guitar licks with. Unless you really want to get weird and just want to add some really bizarre stuff to impress your friends that are into jazz, fussion and contemporary classic music. The diminished scale is used to solo over diminished 7 dim7 chords.
The whole tone scale for guitar guitarskillbuilder. Backing track for improvisation with wholetone scale whole tone scale improvisation example. In the case of this scale, a 12 step interval followed by a whole step interval. It is a hexatonic scale made up of six notes that divide the octave in six equal notes. The pattern for a wholetone scale is easy to remember because it consists only of wholesteps w. The whole tone scale is made up of six notes, which is smaller than the major scale modes but is bigger than the pentatonic scale, and it actually fits fairly easily under the fingers on the fretboard. Major, minor, augmented and diminished triads arpeggios.
Did you think that the whole tone scale was just for jazz and classical music. So going one fret up or down the neck is a half step. The whole tone scale produces an unsettling, ambiguous sound. Fingering is a personal choice of which finger feels natural to you. The whole tone scale is a coolsounding dominant 7th scale that you can use to add tension to your dominant 7th chords. Its use was once frowned upon by strict classical composers, but the scale s distinctive sound can now be heard fairly regularly in classical, film and jazz music. Download our free pdf versions of each scale with fingering. The fretboard is shown with the lowest pitch string at the bottom and the highest pitch string at the top unless youve tuned your instrument differently. A particularly easy scale is the whole tone scale, so called because all the steps in the scale are whole steps. Scale diagrams can also be labeled with either letters or scale degrees.
How to play wholetone scales on guitar jamieholroydguitar. Free guitar scales pdf 84 scale and arpeggios chart. The composer and music theorist george perle calls the wholetone scale interval cycle 2, or c2. This tutorial will teach all you need to know about how to play scales on the guitar. You can download a pdf and read the article on my blog via this link. A wholetone scale is a scale made entirely of wholesteps and has only six notes. I mentioned that there were two applications of the whole tone scale, and weve really only looked at one, its use over a dominant chord. Notice how the whole tone scale helps us to link all these ideas together in a way that sounds logical. Wholetone scale, in music, a scalar arrangement of pitches, each separated from the next by a wholetone step or whole step, in contradistinction to the chromatic scale consisting entirely of half steps, also called semitones and the various diatonic scales, such as the major and minor scales. To me its a interesting scale that should be used sparingly for variety in your playing. This is a socalled symmetrical scale, meaning that the interval is the same throughout the scale. Download your free 62 page pdf beginner jazz guide. Because of the scales construction theres a few cool ways that you can apply it on the guitar neck and use it in your playing. The major scale, harmonic minor scale and melodic minor scale all have seven different notes and an eighth note that repeats the first.
The enigmatic scale scala enigmatica is an unusual musical scale, with elements of both major and minor scales, as well as the whole tone scale. This is handy in terms of guitar technique because it is easy to move a. Skip to blind accessible version of gsharp whole tone guitar scale. In musical analysis, g7 is called the v five chord to c, which is the i one chord. Plus, you can download for free a pdf ebook with 40 exotic guitar scale patterns all along the fretboard guitar scales how to play. So you dont have to learn or practice a new fingering if you know the melodic minor scale. The diminished scale is different from the dominant diminished scale, which alternates half and whole steps and is used to solo over dominant 7b9 chords when first exploring diminished scales on guitar. The wholetone scale can be used to add tensions to your jazz guitar. Here is an example of a lead guitar solo incorporating whole tone scales.
If we have a song in c major, it would sound odd to play the c whole tone scale on top of it as a solo. If you happen to be a fan of classical music from the impressionist period on, then youve definitely heard the whole tone scale, at least. Whole tone and halfstep diminished, for a quite interesting sound. The whole tone scale is a nice tool to get some shifting outside ideas on a minor. C scale starting on a and you have an a minor scale. Com the whole tone guitar scale whole tone scale 12fr. This means that it also has less notes than most of the other scales you use. A whole tone is the same as two steps on the keyboard a half tone is consequently one step. With the combination of the key, tempo, chord progressions and scales suggestions to use, you will be making solos in no time. The whole tone scale is a nice tool to get some shifting outside ideas on a.
Enjoy experimenting with the whole tone scale, and remember, there are only two of them, so they arent too difficult to learn. We can simplify and summarize all 12 whole tone scales to just 2 scale types. In this lesson i will be explaining how to play the whole tone scale on. The whole tone scale produces a tonally ambiguous sound that when played alone can create an eerie or ominous mood. We can also use it, sort of, over a minor chord, but when we do we have to play it a semitone lower. Use the dropdowns to find the boxes for a particular scale, or create your own just by clicking on the. The whole tone scale learn how the whole tone scale is built and how to use it. You only need to know 2 wholetone scales to play over any dominant chord. In this guitar tutorial were going to study the whole tone scale. In this tutorial were going to learn an uncommon type of guitar scale, the wholetone scale, that, as the name suggests, is composed of only wholetones take a look at your guitar and give yourself a little bit of a music theory reminder. In this lesson i am going to go over how you connect a whole tone scale to a tonic minor.
Scales a whole tone scale bass ultimate guitar archive. Home symmetric scales wholetone scale d wholetone scale. The whole tone scale is a sixnote symmetrical scale, which is built by starting on the tonic note, then moving up in whole steps until you reach the next tonic note. The half stepwhole step diminished scale the half whole diminished scale is what we call a symmetrical scale, meaning it is based on a repeating pattern of specific intervals. Show me chords that sound good with a d whole tone scale.
It was originally published in a milan journal as a musical challenge, with an invitation to harmonize it in some way. Plus, you can download for free a pdf ebook with 40 exotic guitar scale patterns all along the fretboard guitar scales. The whole tone scale is a symmetric scale that is formed by a succession of whole tone intervals. The wholehalf step formula is similar to the scale formulas only it uses whole and half steps to explain the construction of a scale. Printable downloadable whole tone scales guitar chart.
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