The Altered Scale for Jazz Guitar — Notes, Shortcut and Use | Niels Dalgaard
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The altered scale
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Jazz guitar scales · Concept

The altered scale

The seventh mode of melodic minor, the sound of a dominant that has to resolve, and the one shortcut worth memorising.

What it is

Take a dominant seventh chord and alter every note that can be altered. The root, the third and the seventh stay — they are what make it a dominant. The fifth becomes both a ♭5 and a ♯5; the ninth becomes both a ♭9 and a ♯9. What you are left with is seven notes, and they are the seventh mode of the melodic minor scale a semitone above.

The shortcut: for any altered dominant, play melodic minor a semitone above the root. Over G7alt, that is A♭ melodic minor. You are not learning a new scale — you are moving one you already know by one fret.

ScaleNotesFormulaAgainst the chordUsage
G Altered scaleG Ab Bb B Db Eb F1 b9 #9 3 #11 b13 b71 b9 #9 3 #11 b13 b7Best choice
G Whole toneG A B C# D# F1 2 3 #11 b13 b71 9 3 #11 b13 b7Alternative
G Half-whole diminishedG Ab Bb B C# D E F1 b9 #9 3 #11 5 13 b71 b9 #9 3 #11 5 13 b7Colour

The books behind this tool

Knowing which scale fits the chord is where the question starts, not where it ends. Tension and Resolution is about what the line does once the scale is decided: where it aims, and why it lands.

Start here Project 02 · Jazz guitar

Tension and Resolution

Build your own modern jazz language Project 04 · Jazz guitar

Jazz Guitar Comping

Creating direction through harmony, rhythm and the expectation framework Project 03 · Harmony

Jazz Harmony

From tradition to the expectation framework · For any instrument

Why it pulls

Nothing in the altered scale is a resting place. Every note that is not the third or the seventh is a semitone away from a note of the chord it is resolving to — which is precisely why it sounds unbearable held on its own and inevitable when it moves. A scale with no stable notes is not a defect; it is a scale built for one job.

This is also why the tool asks what the chord is doing. Over a dominant that is going nowhere — a blues, a static vamp — the altered scale has nothing to resolve to, and it just sounds wrong. Set the context to static and it drops down the list on its own.

In every key

Written out below with the parent melodic minor beside it, so the shortcut is visible rather than asserted.

RootNotesParent scale
CC Db Eb E Gb Ab BbDb melodic minor
D♭Db D E F G A BD melodic minor
DD Eb F F# Ab Bb CEb melodic minor
E♭Eb E Gb G A B DbE melodic minor
EE F G G# Bb C DF melodic minor
FF Gb Ab A Cb Db EbGb melodic minor
F♯F# G A A# C D EG melodic minor
GG Ab Bb B Db Eb FAb melodic minor
A♭Ab A B C D E GbA melodic minor
AA Bb C C# Eb F GBb melodic minor
B♭Bb Cb Db D Fb Gb AbB melodic minor
BB C D D# F G AC melodic minor

Try it on your own chords

Open the scale finder →

Melodic minor in jazz

Read →

Diminished scales

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Tritone substitution

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