Diminished Scale Concepts for Jazz Improvisation

Abstract

          The Diminished scale concept is widely used in jazz vocabulary and it is one of the most crucial tools for jazz improvisor in every jazz genres such as Swing, Bebop, Hard Bop, Fusion Jazz, Contemporary Jazz. This article focuses on analyzing Diminished scale and also reorganizing the group of notes from Diminished scale, the group of notes including two notes groups consisting of Major intervals, Minor intervals, Augmented intervals and Perfect intervals. Three notes groups consisting of Major triads, Minor triads and Diminished triads. Four note groups consisting of Minor-major triads, Major triads sharp 11, Minor triads sharp 11, Dominant seventh chords, Minor seventh chords, Minor seventh flat 5 chords, Dominant seventh flat 5 chords, Diminished major seventh chords, Minor-major sharp 5 seventh chord. The group of five notes are Pentatonic flat 2 scales. Six notes group or Triad pairs are the combination of 2 triads both Major triads and Minor triads. These groups of notes are used for building jazz patterns which are apply to improvisation in various situations. The article also demonstrates jazz patterns created from the analysis and their application in  jazz context, for example, using patterns from Half Whole Diminished scales over Dominant seventh chords or patterns from Whole Half Diminished scales over Major seventh chords.