Pentatonic Scales in Jazz — Superimposition and Colour | Niels Dalgaard

Jazz guitar scales · Concept

Pentatonic scales

Not chord scales. Five notes laid across a chord, chosen for the tensions they produce rather than the chord tones they cover.

Superimposition, not chord-scale

Every other scale on this site is checked for containing the chord tones. Pentatonics are deliberately exempt, because leaving chord tones out is exactly what makes them useful. A pentatonic played over a chord it does not spell produces a set of tensions, and those tensions are the sound.

The classic example: a minor pentatonic played from the root of a dominant chord gives 1, ♯9, 11, 5, ♭7. The ♯9 and the 11 are what you hear — a bluesy, deliberately unresolved dominant colour that no seven-note scale produces as cleanly. This is why the tool reports pentatonics with the degrees they make against the chord rather than the degrees of the scale itself.

ScaleNotesFormulaAgainst the chordUsage
G MixolydianG A B C D E F1 2 3 4 5 6 b71 9 3 11 5 13 b7Best choice
G Lydian dominantG A B C# D E F1 2 3 #4 5 6 b71 9 3 #11 5 13 b7Common
G Major pentatonicG A B D E1 2 3 5 61 9 3 5 13Common
G Dominant bebopG A B C D E F F#1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 71 9 3 11 5 13 b7 7Common
G Minor pentatonicG Bb C D F1 b3 4 5 b71 #9 11 5 b7Common

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.

The blues scale is vocabulary

A minor pentatonic with a ♭5 added, and its usage does not follow chord-scale logic at all. Players use it across whole progressions regardless of what the individual chords are doing, because it works as melodic material rather than as a chord scale. That is a real distinction, and the tool marks it as a colour rather than pretending it is a harmonic answer.

Try it on your own chords

Open the scale finder →