John Stowell Dominant 7 Harmonizations

David Valdez: John Stowell's Jazz guitar mastery book
Over a C7 chord you can play:
  • G melodic minor- one tension (#11)
  • F melodic minor- one tension (b13)
  • Bb melodic minor- two tensions (b9, #9)
  • Eb melodic minor- three tensions (#9, #11, b13)
  • C# melodic minor- four tensions (b9, #9, #11, b13)
He arpeggiates these scales to obtain his signature open, modern and often vertical sound. John also explains in his book/DVD how to use the melodic minor scale (a third down) over Major chords. This gives us the Augmented Major scale, which has a #11 and a #5. John also uses the Melodic Minor scale a whole step up to obtain a Major scale with a b9. These are obviously very spicy scale choices over a Major 7th chord but John really makes them work in a way that isn't jarring to the ears.

G melodic minor over C7 is what Mark Levine calls the Lydian Dominant scale, which is, numerically: 1 2 3 #4 5 6 b7.

F melodic minor (along with F harmonic minor) is one of the default choices over a Dom.7 chord resolving to minor, or, for slightly more interest, resolving to major.

Bb melodic minor is essentially reharmonizing the C7 to C7sus4b9, yielding the Phrygian Nat.6 scale: 1 b2 b3 4 5 6 b7. This could also be used over C-7 iv chords, eg: the first chord in the sequence C-7 F7 Bb-7 Eb7 Ab.

Sus4b9 chords are ubiquitous throughout modern jazz, with players like Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner using them heavily. Often, they are used over pedal basslines, such as in the chord progression:

|| G7sus4b9 | Gsus13 | Gsus4b9 | G13b9 | C6/9 ||

Eb melodic minor reharmonizes the C7 to C-7b5, a less-common substitution but not unheard-of. Incidentally, when I attended a John Stowell / Kurt Rosenwinkel master class in Seattle a couple of years ago, Rosenwinkel said that he freely substitutes Dom.7, minor7 and minor7b5 chords for each other. So, definitely try throwing in chords of different qualities with the same root, though I wouldn't try this with Major7 chords.

Here's an example of reharmonizing a basic iii-vi-ii-V7 progression in the key of C:

|| E-7 A-7 | D-7 G7 | E-7b5 A7 | D-7b5 G7 | E7 A-7b5 | D7 G7 | E7 A7 D-7b5 G7 | C6/9 ||

C# melodic minor is commonly known as the altered scale. It is ubiquitous in modern jazz and has perhaps achieved over-use as a "go-to" scale for altered chords. Nevertheless, it is a useful scale for using altered harmony. The scale degrees are 1 b2 b3 3 #4 #5 b7. In terms of which extensions of the chord this translates to, b2 and b3 correspond to b9 and #9 of a Dom.7 chord, and #4 and #5 are usually notated as #11 and b13.

Augmented Major is the scale Mark Levine calls the Lydian #5 scale. It contains the 1 2 3 #4 #5 6 7 of a scale, and can be derived by playing the third degree of the melodic minor scale. (eg: C Lydian #5 is the third degree of A melodic minor).

This is an interesting scale that has received some use in modern jazz and fusion. Kurt Rosenwinkel uses it extensively on his 2001 album, The Next Step.

Major add b9 is the other scale choice discussed in the above post. There's no real name for it, and Major add b9 is a little misleading because there isn't even a root! But we can't exactly call it a Major #1 scale, or can we?

In any case, the scale is derived by playing the melodic minor scale a whole tone above the root, eg: D melodic minor over a C major chord. The resulting scale yields the following notes: b2 2 3 4 5 6 7.

When I was on the just-jazz email list some years ago, I put forth the idea that melodic minor harmony correlates to major scale harmony by starting the melodic minor scale a whole step above the major scale. For example:

Major mode       |  Mel. minor mode

D Dorian         |         D Mel. minor
E Phrygian       |         E Phrygian Nat.6
F Lydian         |         F Lydian #5
G Mixolydian     |         G Lydian Dominant (eg: the chord G7#11)
A Aeolian        |         A Mixolydian b6
B Locrian        |         B Locrian Nat.2
C Ionian         |         C# Altered

In each case, the mel. minor scale harmony will be only one note different from the major scale harmony.

John Stowell's use of the D melodic minor scale over C major chords fits in with the above chart, and it makes for a pretty interesting harmonic substitution. The only song I can think of that uses this scale is Herbie Hancock's Tell me a Bedtime Story, which uses the A melodic minor scale over a G major chord in the intro.


posted 4:42 PM Monday, April 17, 2006

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