E7th Chord Scale

[Ian]

This one lives on the top four strings. These make for not only great "stab" chords, but also come in handy when playing ensemble. Their slightly higher register stays out of the way of big wooly wound string chords (say THAT 10 times fast !!) , allowing everybody their own "sonic space".

----4----5----7----9---11---12---14---16---------
----3----5----7----9---10---12---14---15---------
----4----6----8----9---11---13---14---16---------
----2----4----6----7---9-----11---13---14---------
-------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------


I -E7th
II -F#m7th
III-G#m7th
IV- A Maj 7th
V - B7th
VI- C#m7th
VII - D# sumthin...D#fermented (lol)
VIII - E 7th

I can never remember what that bloody VII chord is called!!!
Anyway , throw some of these subsitiutions into your daily playing and see what sounds good to you.
CHEERS!!!!

[Jeff S]

This sounds nice, thanks!

Originally Posted by Ian

I can never remember what that bloody VII chord is called

A min7b5, or sometimes a half-dim7.

[Admin]

There's actually no such thing as a "chord scale," but the generally accepted meaning of that term is to describe a set of notes used over a particular chord.

For instance, a common chord scale to use over an E7 chord would be an E major scale with a flatted 7th degree (also known as "E Mixolydian mode," and/or an A major scale). Some other chord scales you could use over an E7 chord might include an E whole tone scale, an E altered scale (same notes as F melodic minor), an E diminished scale, etc., depending on how "outside" you wanted to get.

When you build chords by stacking thirds on scale tones, what you get is the diatonic ("within the key") chords for that key. What you have here is a set of chords built on roots taken from the E major scale, but using notes from both the E major AND E Mixolydian scales (i.e., both D natural and D# are used).

On a side note (ouch, sorry for the pun): if you add a major seventh degree to a Mixolydian scale, you get what's known as a "bebop 7th scale." Here are the notes in E:

E -- F# -- G# -- A -- B -- C# -- D -- D# -- E

Note that it has eight scale degrees instead of seven. Try playing it up and down in eighth notes over an E7 starting on any chord tone, and you'll find that the chord tones wind up ON the beats, with the others falling on the offbeats. Sounds very smooth. (To get the bebop major scale, just add the chromatic note between the 5th and 6th degrees and you'll get the same effect.)

Anyway, I mainly wanted to clarify the "chord scale" term so nobody gets confused at their next lesson with their teacher... ;-) CS

[blasphemer]

Aside from the confusion about the term "chord scale" there's also a bit of confusion here about what it means to harmonize a scale.

Typically you harmonize a scale by building chords starting from each of the tones in the scale.

The set of chord voicings provided in the first posting are not a harmonized scale. If the first (and last chords) in that sequence were Emaj7 chords, instead of E7 chords, that would be a harmonized E major scale.

If you wanted to provide a harmonized scale starting with E7, the "normal" way to do it would be to harmonize the E mixolydian scale. So you'd end up with:

E7
F#min7
G#min7b5
Amaj7
Bmin7
C#min7
Dmaj7
E7

Which is the same set of chords you'd get if your'd harmonized the A major scale, just starting from a different point.