Moving From The Familiar To The Unfamiliar IV Hybrid Scales
(09 Aug 02)
We want to blow over changes that require an A Minor Aeolian tonality for most of the solo, but have some passages that use an E Major (or E Dom7) Chord which is foreign to this scale.
This chord has G# instead of G so the first impulse is to replace G with G#.
We could do this with A minor Pentatonic and just replace the G with G# for
this passage.
The resultant scale would have the notes:
A C D E G#. This might work, but it is not enough.
To create A Aeolian from A Minor Pentatonic we need to add m6(F) and M2 (B).
A Aeolian: A (B) C D E (F) G
Now by raising G to G# in A Aeolian we end up with A Harmonic Minor.
This is a cool scale but it has a big gap between the 6th and 7th tone. We could also add the b7 and get a Hybrid scale. (In this case the Hybrid is Aeolian and Harmonic)
In A Minor Harmonic, playing a descending lick from G# in eighth notes we would have G# F E D C B A. (See first half of staff below)
Remember we are playing over some kind of E Major or E7 chord here.
The strong beats do not contain chord tones, in this case 3 1 b6 4 and four is an AVOID note.
If we added G to this we would have G# G F E D C B A (a Hybrid Scale).
(See second half of staff below)
Now the the strong beats would have G# F E D B or 3 b9 1 7 5 of an E7(b9)
just the right notes to make this line sing!
Now I am not advocating that you plan out your licks to this degree but with a
little ingenuity you can play thousands of cool runs in this scale to fit with
the E Dom chord and some that alternate between Tonic and Dominant.
Now for some specific examples.
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