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Scales › altered (super-Locrian, 7th mode of melodic minor)

altered (super-Locrian, 7th mode of melodic minor) scale

maximum altered tension

7 notes

guide tones (3rd & 7th — the heart of the sound) avoid (strong clash)

C · Db · D# · E · Gb · G# · Bb

What color?

The scale of every dominant alteration: b9, #9, b5 and #5 gathered around a 3 and a b7. Maximum tension, you launch it on the V7 just before the resolution for the most friction before settling.

Origin & history

The seventh mode of the melodic minor, theorized and named by 20th-century jazz pedagogy. Placed over a dominant, it alters all of its extensions (♭9, ♯9, ♯11, ♭13) for maximum tension just before the resolution — hence its name. It is the vocabulary of bebop and post-bop solos over dominants.

Which chords to play it on?

The jazz consensus (Aebersold) recommends it on:

dominant seventh chord

Sibling modes

The altered (super-Locrian, 7th mode of melodic minor) scale is one of the modes of the melodic minor : it shares exactly the same notes as the modes below, but built on a different degree of the parent scale (melodic minor).

melodic minor bright minor-major Dorian ♭2 (Phrygian ♮6) Dorian with a soft b9 Lydian augmented (Lydian ♯5) suspended Lydian ♯5 Lydian dominant (Mixolydian ♯11, 4th mode of melodic minor) ♯11 dominant Mixolydian ♭6 (melodic major) major with a bittersweet ♭6 Locrian ♮2 (6th mode of melodic minor) half-diminished ♮9, more stable

Try it in a real chart

Paste a chord chart into the tool: Pentania tells you, chord by chord, when this scale fits — and what other colors are open to you. Open the tool →