Jazz musicians have a huge vocabulary of motifs, licks, patterns and ideas from which to choose. Every idea or phrase they play may not be their original. Each player amasses a library of playable ideas and these ideas come from various sources such as your imagination, teachers, recordings, live concerts or books. Some are two measures in length, some are four, six or eight, etc. All are memo- rized, Memory is the most important element in improvising and is used constantly. To memorize a jazz tune, memorize the original melody and do so in the key which it is most often played. Memorize the actual chord/scale progression. Then memorize each individual scale and chord. For example, memorize the melody and actual chord progression to the song Indiana which is in this book. Memorize everything and leave your books at home! Listening to recorded versions of songs speeds up the memorization process. Our mind gets a musical image of what the song can sound like and this seems to stir our musical imagination and helps us keep our place. Jazz demands you use your imagination and it is creativity in its purest sense. ALTERED TONES of the DOMINANT SCALE The dominant 7th chord has always lent itself to experimentation. Since the 3rd and 7th are the two important anchor tones of the chord/scale, jazz musicians have enjoyed altering other tones of the scale in order to add even more tension. By altering certain tones of the dominant 7th scale more tension is added. The second note, often called the Sth, may be raised % step and also lowered % step to make two altered tones. We call these the flat 9 (b9) and the raised or sharp 9 (+9, #9) (+ and # both mean to raise the note % step). When a b9 appears in a scale the #9 is also present and visa versa. These two notes are often called pretty notes, altered notes, blue notes or high tension notes. They create tension and want to resolve, usually by half-step either up or down when the dominant 7th chord resolves. TeTonsion R-Release Cc) 7 FA C7 7 FA c7 A C7) ogy FA v7 I v7 I v7 1 v7 1 The diminished whole-tone scale as well as the diminished scale (the one which begins with a half-step, H WH WH WH W) both contain a b9 and a #9. Both scales are used as substitute scales for a dominant 7th chord/scale, especially when the V7 is going to resolve traditionally, to a chord whose root lies up a perfect 4th. The idea in any approach to improvising over any musical sequence is not how much tension you can create, but how you resolve that tension to the next chord. More tension gives more opportunities for release. ‘The two most used altered dominant scales are the diminished whole-tone scale and the dimin- ished scale. The dim. whole-tone scale (H W H WW WW) has been called by various names. Some of them are: Pomeroy scale (named by me after Herb Pomeroy who taught at Berklee School of Music for many years and was a leader in jazz education), altered scale, and Super Locrian scale. The diminished scale that is used as a substitute for dominants is the diminished scale that begins with a 5 a