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. Half tone, whole tone, minor third, and major third are the building blocks of the scales in this book. The whole tone scale learn how the whole tone scale is built and how to use it. Fingering is a personal choice of which finger feels natural to you. Free guitar scales pdf 84 scale and arpeggios chart. An introduction to symmetrical scales for guitar guitar.
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. You can download a pdf and read the article on my blog via this link. The major scale, harmonic minor scale and melodic minor scale all have seven different notes and an eighth note that repeats the first. 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.
As the name suggests, the whole tone scale is constructed purely from whole steps 2 frets. In this lesson, you will learn how to build the whole tone scale and apply it to your jazz guitar playing. Skip to blind accessible version of gsharp whole tone guitar scale. Free guitar scales ebook scale and arpeggio patterns pdf. 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. 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. Printable downloadable whole tone scales guitar chart. A whole tone is the same as two steps on the keyboard a half tone is consequently one step. The whole tone scale for guitar jazz guitar online. Wholetone and halfstep diminished, for a quite interesting sound.
Major and minor scales consists of 7 notes, while pentatonic scales are made of 5 notes. Guitar whole tone scale chart printable pdf subject. Here is an example of a lead guitar solo incorporating whole tone scales. 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 pdf ebook method containing 40 major jazz guitar licks with. Hi, what guitar is that hanging above the light switch on the top right. We can also use it, sort of, over a minor chord, but when we do we have to play it a semitone lower. The wholetone scale can be used to add tensions to your jazz guitar. 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 whole tone scale consists of note a whole step apart. Scales a whole tone scale bass ultimate guitar archive. The composer and music theorist george perle calls the wholetone scale interval cycle 2, or c2. The diminished scale is used to solo over diminished 7 dim7 chords. The wholetone scale is an elusive and, for most musicians, problematic series of notes. Enjoy experimenting with the whole tone scale, and remember, there are only two of them, so they arent too difficult to learn. C scale starting on a and you have an a minor scale. We can simplify and summarize all 12 whole tone scales to just 2 scale types.
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. 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. With the combination of the key, tempo, chord progressions and scales suggestions to use, you will be making solos in no time. The scale is built by using one interval, a tone, between each note. I suggest to use it just on the dominant 7th chord. With this tool it is possible to illustrate scales, give them titles and save them as images for inclusion in lessons or forum posts. Plus, you can download for free a pdf ebook with 40 exotic guitar scale patterns all along the fretboard guitar scales how to play. Notice how the whole tone scale helps us to link all these ideas together in a way that sounds logical. Its used by jazz guitarists to improvise over dominant chords as it produces jazzysounding dissonances tensions. The whole tone scale produces a tonally ambiguous sound that when played alone can create an eerie or ominous mood. 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. A particularly easy scale is the whole tone scale, so called because all the steps in the scale are whole steps.
Download your free 62 page pdf beginner jazz guide. 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 means that it also has less notes than most of the other scales you use. It has no leading tone because all tones are the same distance apart. The wholetone scale can be used to add tensions to your jazz guitar improvisations over. Use the dropdowns to find the boxes for a particular scale, or create your own just by clicking on the. The whole tone scale is a coolsounding dominant 7th scale that you can use to add tension to your dominant 7th chords. 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. The whole tone scale is a symmetric scale that is formed by a succession of whole tone intervals. This is a socalled symmetrical scale, meaning that the interval is the same throughout the scale. In this lesson i am going to go over how you connect a whole tone scale to a tonic minor. 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. This tutorial will teach all you need to know about how to play scales on the guitar. Constructing the scale is rather simplesix wholesteps and youre there.
It was originally published in a milan journal as a musical challenge, with an invitation to harmonize it in some way. Major, minor, augmented and diminished triads arpeggios. How to play wholetone scales on guitar jamieholroydguitar. 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. Plus, you can download for free a pdf ebook with 40 exotic guitar scale patterns all along the fretboard guitar scales. So you dont have to learn or practice a new fingering if you know the melodic minor scale. Com the whole tone guitar scale whole tone scale 12fr. Backing track for improvisation with wholetone scale whole tone scale improvisation example. In this lesson i will be explaining how to play the whole tone scale on. 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.
A wholetone scale is a scale made entirely of wholesteps and has only six notes. The whole tone scale is a sixnote or hexatonic scale. Show me chords that sound good with a d whole tone scale. The whole tone scale produces an unsettling, ambiguous sound. Example guitar solo incorporating wholetone scales. Did you think that the whole tone scale was just for jazz and classical music. But if we find one of the other chords in a typical song in c major, a very common one is g7.
Click here for a free printable high quality pdf file of this guitar scale. List of pieces which use the whole tone scale wikipedia. 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. Whole tone and halfstep diminished, for a quite interesting sound. Download our free pdf versions of each scale with fingering. The whole tone scale is a nice tool to get some shifting outside ideas on a minor. 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.
In musical analysis, g7 is called the v five chord to c, which is the i one chord. Scale diagrams can also be labeled with either letters or scale degrees. The whole tone scale for guitar guitarskillbuilder. In this guitar tutorial were going to study the whole tone scale. The wholetone scale is a great scale to learn if you want to add some crunch to your lines. It is a hexatonic scale made up of six notes that divide the octave in six equal notes. But because any note of the scale can be considered the root, it does create a sound that seems to wander aimlessly. So going one fret up or down the neck is a half step. In this tutorial were going to learn an uncommon type of guitar scale, the whole tone scale, that, as the name suggests, is composed of only whole tones take a look at your guitar and give yourself a little bit of a music theory reminder. 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 pattern for a wholetone scale is easy to remember because it consists only of wholesteps w.
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