Is chord scale theory an unhelpful starting point for players?

Question

Do others on here find the chord scale theory approach is detrimental to many guitar players learning jazz? I spent a long time learning all my scales and arpeggios but I could never get the hang of playing over complex progressions shifting to a new scale for each chord. Frankly it didn't sound musical and the limited results discouraged me from continuing this route.

I then took to analysing chord function and focusing on "playing the key", playing by ear, forcing myself to "feel" where the song was going and which notes to play. While I am still very much a beginner jazz player it totally opened it all up for me and it is actually enjoyable to play again!

While I am far far far away from a great like Grant Green, now that I play like this I feel my lines sound a lot more like how he plays than many tutors on Youtube I have heard who focus on CST where there doesn't seem to be any blues to the sound. I am not saying learning scales (although arpeggios were more useful) was a waste of time for me as I know the notes of each chord but as soon as I "forgot" it all I played better.

I'm not saying they are wrong but I wish I had been told the following when I first started.

1)learn the melody 2) play by ear 3) focus on playing melodies over a progression, some will work some wont but you will remember the ones that do 4) don't be afraid to play "avoid" notes, take a chance 5) don't learn lots of different scale names, just look at what notes change as you play 5) the harmony does most of the work, you can play something super simple and a beautiful progression will make it sound a million dollars!

Any thoughts from other players, experienced or beginner?

Answer 1

Put me in the "beginner" category.

Do others on here find the chord scale theory approach is detrimental to many guitar players learning jazz?

My opinion: YES.

Not just guitar, piano too. Probably the only place it isn't detrimental is with drummers :-)

If you find your jazz standard in people like Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, etc. they didn't use the chord scale system. It was invented in the 1970's. From what I understand it was the chosen method when jazz entered the Academy.

In my own experience I consider it detrimental. A huge wast of time! I couldn't figure out why attempts to improvise basic riffs from the scales just didn't sound like jazz. Then when I looked at solo transcriptions from Charlie Christian it became super-obvious what the problem was: he improvised from broken chords and their embellishment. I noticed the same in transcripts from Charlie Parker.

Of course if you fill in a seventh chord with all passing tones you get something that looks like a scale. So playing from chord tones doesn't preclude linear, step-wise playing.

You can get into a chicken or the egg situation with chords versus scale thinking. Filled in chords make scales. Scales in thirds make chords. But IMO these aren't interchangeable ideas. Understanding chords is understanding harmony. Keep in mind jazz is often written with lead sheet chord symbols. You get something like Bb7 and chord scale system says play B flat Mixolydian. If you only know the scale, you don't know the chord tones, you don't know the harmonic meaning, so the avoid tone concept is added into the system. It seems like a cumbersome system that hopes to avoid learning traditional harmony.

The problem for beginners like me is none of the chord scale system methods (none I have seen) prefaces the method with an explanation that none of the great jazz innovators in the evolution of jazz played this way.

The exception is modal jazz. It's clear why that style, in it's abandoning of standard chord progressions, turned the attention to the scale. When you play 8 or 16 bars of one single chord, it's totally obvious you wouldn't focus on chord tones and take a different approach, a scale based approach.

Blues bases stuff seems different too. When the progression is some kind of basic jazzy blues, just using a blues "scale" works well. It seems like you can mix up broken chord and blues scale stuff very nicely.

Answer 2

The approach of matching a scale to a chord is useful but should never be the main focus of understanding changes. The opposite or inverse approach is to see how chords fit into a single scale. For example, there are 7 7th chords that are build on the major scale and these can be used to create the "circle progression",

I --> IV --> vii --> iii --> vi --> ii --> V --> I

The arpeggios and chords all fit into one scale so why follow each chord around?
We frequently modulate to other Major and minor keys in a progression and indicate this harmonically we insert a chunk of the above progression leading to the V7 of the new key. For example, If you wanted to modulate from I to IV all you need to do is play a dominant 7th on the I, i.e. I --> I7 --> IV. Another, modulate to the relative minor by playing a V7 on the iii chord. These are obviously introducing new accidentals and deviating from the original key, but they have a purpose and if you can understand that you can identify entire sequences of chords as being in one key. Then, instead of chasing the chords down you can simply stay on one scale and use your ear to lead you through the changes.

There is a lot more to music than scales. A tune has a feel as you point out. That is due as much to rhythm and phrasing as from the choice of notes. In my opinion an approach worth taking is to learn some tunes and other guitarists solos by ear (if possible) or using transcriptions and dissect them. You will see some common patterns and if you know some music theory you can put it to use. Ask yourself how does this lick follow the scale-chord approach (it likely doesn't). In my experience melodies do not deviate as much as the chords seem to. Chords support melody not the other way around. You can also experiment with alternate chord progressions for a given tune, something simpler than what is written in the real book. Jazz may seem more complex than rock for example but there are some basic templates that are over used. Just like the I IV V there is the ii V I (and the ii is a substitute for the IV). We tend to use altered chords to create more leading tones in chord movements but it's all still just basic western music theory at play.

The melody tells the story and one approach it to borrow lines from the melody and turn them into lick, moving them around the progression. You should definitely not avoid avoid notes. You just have to resolve them, pass through them. Or force the "out" harmony. You can really play anything over a progression as long as there is some coherence and patterns that repeat in phrases and rhythms.

Jerry Coker's book advocates keeping a book of licks and phrases that you write, say 3 to 5 phrases a day. They can by simple 2 or 3 note repeating phrases. Then he recommends using just a couple of these over a set of changes to hear how (or if) they fit together.

I'd say learn more about classical harmony theory ti understand chord progressions and their relation to melody. Keep a book of licks. Transcribe by ear and dissect what you hear looking for repeated patterns. Keep experimenting and keep what works, drop what doesn't. Don't mistake music theory for hard and fast rules that always lead to success (or failure if ignored).

Answer 3

It's funny how this question resonates with me, and how it applies to blues, not just to jazz. I've been struggling to improvise over a 12-bar blues progression for years, and only recently I've started to break through.

Like you, I find that there's a lot of inefficient teaching around.

I was first told to use the 'blues scale' (minor pentatonic with an extra b5), and I was hitting a lot of wrong notes.

Then I was told to use chord tones (or arpeggios) and the solos started to reflect the underlying harmony, but I found that they didn't say anything (ie: they did not add much to the harmony).

Then I was told to use the mixolydian scale corresponding to each chord (ie A myxolydian over the A7 chord, E myxolydian over E7, etc.). I guess this is what you call the "chord scale theory". I started to get a more diverse sound, but still not bluesy enough.

For me blues soloing only make sense when you mix all the following:

• minor blues scale
• chord tones / arpeggios
• major pentatonic (for major blues only)
• chord scale theory
• bends (essential!)
• vibratos, hammer-ons and pull-offs
• a library licks: find out what they sound like, and try to find the right moment to play them (like @ggcg suggested above)
• a library of turnarounds to use on the 11th and 12th bars

So I find that the chord scale theory is useful as one building block, but by themselves not enough to make a good solo. I find scales/arpeggios very useful when I want to make a fast runcovering 2 octaves to add more tension.

Answer 4

Rather than complete scales, chord tones are more important, so it's around half of scales!

Reading some ideas - 'It's in key C, so C Ionian for that, Dm bar uses D Dorian, G bar uses G Mixolydian etc makes no sense to me. That's all using the same set of 7 notes, all that changes is the root. Which is pretty apparent from the name of the chord in the bar.

If that's a more sophisticated Bm7♭5, then playing over the chord will hint that even though it's a Bm7 chord, playing F♮ is generally going to be more musical than playing F♯. But that's one note - from that chord - not a complete scale. And who plays jazz by running up and down particular scales in each bar anyway? That's maybe not music?

Answer 5

If the chord-scale theory leads you to selecting a mode for every chord change and playing random notes from that mode's scale, without considering what the played notes do in terms of chordal harmony around a tonic, then the theory is harmful for you. Music is not random. Harmony is not random. If you play random notes, you get random harmony, and I'd say, it's not even music, it's chaos. There is a lot of unpredictability and randomness in improvisation, but it must be tamed and controlled by sensibility and taste.

Every melody outlines a set of possible harmonic changes, melodies do not live as a separate entity in their own universe. Similarly, every harmonic progression supports some melodic possibilities. If you solo melodic notes, everything you play either (a) supports and strengthens the existing harmonic ideas, (b) tweaks the harmony in some way, giving it a different character, or (c) disagrees with and fights against the harmony by creating incompatible unrelated harmonic ideas. Melody and harmony go hand in hand, every melody outlines some harmonic feelings, even if it's a single-voice solo. In my opinion, you can't really improvise good melody lines, if you can't improvise chord progressions. If you made a good melody, at the same time you also made the ingredients for harmonic progressions, whether you know it or not.

Answer 6

I did not find the chord-scale approach helpful, in which each chord uses a different scale.

I learned more about improvising by listening to lots of jazz than by matching up my modes and chords. In many jazz tunes, chords don't last much longer than two beats (maybe a measure.) That is not enough time to create a specific color from each scale. Besides, all the diatonic chords in the piece ultimately use the same set of notes. Does it really matter what note mode for each chord begins and ends on when improvising?

It is important to know the notes of each chord because the chord tones are the anchors and the notes used for resolution. Any note can be played if it is resolved well.

It also depends on your style. Some jazz artists are known for having solos that stay in the higher ends of extended chords and are generally dissonant.