JAzz
The Whole Tone scale
b Y John hEUssEns TAMM
Creating Jazzy Lines, One Step at a Time
The whole tone scale is created from nothing but consecutive whole steps (notes that are two frets apart):
When you’re improvising and creating spontaneous music in jazz, the last thing you want is to play something that doesn’t have an attractive
melodic quality. If we analyze the degrees of the whole tone scale and see what chords we can harmonize this sound with, it looks like a very
functional device for odd-sounding augmented (#5) and flat-five (%
5) chords. To my ears, it’s okay if you’re playing a quick passage or a chord
change that has one of the following chords: A7%
5, A7#5, A9%
5, A9#5 ( 1 3
5 #5
7 9).
