Improvising on “All The Things You Are” using enhanced scales

So I don’t know what you thought. I hope you felt that most of it sounded right. There were a few places where I think there were some perhaps unnecessary tensions. That’s what I want to discuss here. Now this section is a little bit advanced. If it’s too much for you then we can leave it. It’s not central to the development of our course.

If you want to know what I would use if I were to improvise on this - and remember that this is one of the most complicated chord sequences in the whole of jazz standards, so if you go for a jam session, as I say, this would be one of the hardest tunes to play, in a sense - what would I do? Well I think the first place there would be a discrepancy would be at bar 5, because bar 5 is a II♭-V-I-I. So we’ve got a D flat as the root and we have a major seventh 6/9 version of the chord, and we’re playing over a C scale, rather than over the D flat major scale.

So they only have - how many is it - a couple of notes in common. Most of the notes don’t really fit. What I need to get across to you is that we’re not really talking about playing over chords - we’re talking about playing over chord sequences. And because it’s a sequence - because eventually it’s II♭-V-I which will resolve to I - you’ll get tension, but you’ll get release when you get there. So although in some sense all the notes are wrong in that bar, you will get resolution … and we’re home to C. I’d probably use D flat major scale in that bar.

The analogous bar in A2 is the 5th bar of that where we’ve got an A flat major and we’re playing G over it as the scale. So I’d probably again match that with A flat major … and then G … Then the middle 8 as before except the very last chord is this C+7 and I would use a special scale with that called the altered scale which I don’t want to look at this stage. We’ll discuss it when we talk about the modes of the melodic minor, would you believe.

Then the other place where I would probably differ is in bars 29, 30, 31, 32 - where the chords are going D flat major, D flat minor, C minor, B diminished - I’d probably make the scales agree there. So on the D flat major I’d play the D flat major scale … on the D flat minor I’d play D flat dorian … which is of course B major rooted on D flat. Then the next bar C minor7 I’d play the dorian scale … which is of course B flat major rooted on C.

Then the next bar I’d play B diminished … which is of course the same notes as in the scale of D diminished … I’ll play a little bit now using those alterations - what I’ve called the enhanced scales - where we’ve got an occasional bar where we have a different scale and then there shouldn’t really be any clashes if I get it right. I’m going to start again just before the jazz - do 1 chorus.