One thing not mentioned in this thread is the term Scale Tone 7ths or sometimes Scale Tone Degrees. It's described in several places in this thread but not named. That term is very well known among musicians. What your major and minor charts are showing is Scale Tone 7ths. Note a 7th chord is four notes, not a basic triad. Sure, people can play a major or minor triad on guitar or piano but 75% of the time or more it's a version of a 7th chord because a simple triad is so plain vanilla. 7th chords are the foundation of pretty much everything. In the major chart you created it should be called the Scale Tone 7ths chart. 1 is major, 2 is minor, 3 is minor, etc. But, it's a Major or Minor 7th with the minor 7th down a half step so in C the Maj 7th is B but the Min 7th is Bb.

The comment about knowing all the scales and theory but then you can break those rules is completely wrong for a newbie. No, you can't break the rules until you know them so intimately you can play every one of them in your sleep then maybe think about breaking them. The point of endless practicing to learn a diminished or whole tone scale is to pound it into your brain what they sound like so when you listen to records you recognize exactly what they're doing. If you're only messing around in your basement writing your own stuff then feel free to break some rules but even then, not recommended. If you're playing out with others then absolutely not. Start doing that you'll get thrown off the stage or at least never get called back again. Pretty much everyone I work with in rock, blues, funk, jazz groups and one big band knows all this stuff better than I do but I can hang with them.

Each one of those scales have a distinctive sound against the primary tonality of the song. You hear it, you realize the person played a snippet of a whole tone scale to lead to the next chord change for example so the next time you play that tune you can play something that compliments it and why? Because you practiced it for hours and hours over the last six months or whatever. Each scale requires different fingerings and hand positions so it's not something you can just do with no practice. If you ask your guitarist what he did and he says I played two bars of whole tone over the four chord you know what he means. You don't work on that stuff what he said is Greek to you.

So yeah, if you want to be a complete player you need to know all those scales. Do I know them all fluidly? Heck no that's a ton of work but I do know the most commonly used ones, all I'm saying is this is one reason learning music is a lifelong thing because there's isn't time unless you're a genius level full time pro. Us part time hackers have other things to do in addition to our little musical hobby. To me the most important scales to learn are of course the major and minor but then learn the blues scale, by far the most important one in classic rock and blues, the pentatonic major and minor (very important) then the diminished and whole tone. That's only six, not too bad.

People think this is for mostly jazz, not true at all. I've analyzed lots of classic rock stuff by the Eagles, the Allman Bros, Santana, Genesis, Queen and so many more. Most of those guys when you read their bios started as very educated musicians, they knew all this stuff from day one. Neil Schon's dad Matt played sax in the symphony and co wrote several Journey tunes so no, Neil didn't just pick it up on his own. Some did of course but they had so much talent and great ears they figured it out as they went but that's very rare. Paul McCartney for example grew up in a house where his father was the leader of a big band and had a piano in his living room. What about modern music? Lady Gaga, Nora Jones and Charlie Puth are all classically trained pianists.

All these great players learned all these rules at an early age and probably broke some of them but not until much later. You have to be a master before you have the right to start breaking them because they've been developed over centuries and are there for a very good reason. They work.

Bob


Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.