CHRIS BESTWICK

In an effort to re-focus my mind away from Joomla (see my previous blog) and back towards music, I thought I'd write the first in what may become an occasional series of articles about jazz harmony. This time I'm going to look at how we can add tension and interest to our playing over minor chords by using major triads based on the diminished scale. (Those of you of a non-theoretical disposition may want to look away now :)

I'm going to use E-minor as an example. If we're playing over this chord using the dorian mode we'll be using the notes E, F#, G, A, B C#, D, E.

To add some interest/tension to what we're playing, we could use the diminished scale instead. The first couple of bars of the example below show us this scale based on the root of E (E, F#, G, A, Bb, C, C#, Eb, E). (I've used a combination of sharps and flats because it's easier, for me at least, when it comes to thinking of the major triads based on the scale.)

Compared to our original dorian mode, we can see that the diminished scale gives us the additional notes Bb, C and Eb. In terms of the E root, these are the b5, b6 and major 7 (or however you prefer to consider them..!).

We could, then, just play scale-based ideas using the diminished scale, and this would add colour to our improvisation. To help the listener (and ourselves) make sense of these tensions/colours, I think it's helpful to go a step further and use the major triads based on the diminished scale - this is because we're so used to the sound of major triads that they make musical sense to us in this context, even if some of the individual notes would perhaps sound a little strange on their own.

So, looking at the third bar of the example above, we can see the major triads that can be built on this E diminished scale, namely F# (F#, A#, C#), A (A, C#, E), C (C, E, G), and Eb (Eb, G, Bb). We can think of these as 4 triads based a minor 3rd apart, or as 2 pairs of triads, each a flat 5th apart (F# and C, Eb and A).

OK, here's an example:

Triad Example 1 by Chris Bestwick

This example passes through the F# triad, then the C triad, then the Eb triad, then the A triad, before landing on the G major triad (which is from our original dorian scale).

Here's another:

Triad Example 2 by Chris Bestwick

This time we start with the G triad, then pass through C, then F#, then A (the 3rd bar going from G to A triads, again from our dorian scale).

And the last one:

Triad Example 3 by Chris Bestwick

This time the triad movement is from F# to C, then we pass through G and A from the dorian, then from Eb to A (with a bit of rhythmic displacement thrown in :)

Finally, here's a (very rough) sound clip where you can hear the ideas used in context:

Triad Groove by Chris Bestwick

(You can hear a more polished use of this concept in my tune, Chinatown - a tune largely based on major triads, which may or may not have influenced its title :)

As the diminished scale is a symmetric scale (i.e. it's based on a regular pattern of whole steps and half steps) all the ideas above can also be used over G minor, Bb minor, and C# minor. Try them out!

Chris