Victor Bailey

The Symmetrical Diminished Scale

Victor Bailey will forever be known as the man who took over the bass duties in Weather Report after Jaco Pastorius. However, he has had a long and fruitful career laying down the bottom for artists as diverse as Michael Brecker, LL Cool J, Mike Stern, Mary J Blige, Steps Ahead, and Madonna. Victor manages to cross all these stylistic boundaries while retaining his unique musical personality, which includes his advanced melodic concept. His command of the jazz vocabulary and swinging feel give his soloing an authenticity that stands out in a world saturated with chops-driven bass slingers. I asked Victor about some of the material he draws on to create his solos, and he gave me a lesson on using the symmetrical diminished scale for voice leading to chord tones and tensions. As the name suggests, the symmetrical diminished scale is built from a symmetrical pattern of whole-steps and half-steps. Ex. 1 shows the scale starting from C. Notice that it takes eight notes (C, D, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, A, B, C) to get to the octave instead of the usual seven. This scale has an interesting quality and it works well with minor harmony. The half-step shift with the 4th finger is the key to fingering this scale effectively. When descending, you can also shift using the 1st finger between Gb and F. Ex. 2 shows the symmetrical diminished scale starting on the E string and extending past the octave. The fingering makes it easy to continue the pattern across all four strings. Ex. 3 uses a IIm7b5V7b9#11 progression to show how the scale, now starting on G, works with chord changesin this case, Gm7b5 and C7b9#11. To really hear how the scale interacts with these minor harmonies, record the chords and play the line over it. Ex. 3 works over any basic IIm7V7 progression, but it goes especially well with the b5 and b9 tensions included. Chord tones and tensions land on the downbeats, while the upbeats create strong voice leading. In bar 1, beat one is the root of Gm7b5, beat two is the minor 3rd, and beat four is the 13th. In bar 2, beat one is the 5th of C7b9#11, beat two is the b7th, beat three is the b9th, and beat four is the 3rd. Because the scale lines up with the chord tones and tensions, it becomes a useful tool for improvising over the progression. Ex. 4 takes this idea several steps further by using the symmetrical diminished scale through a sequence of descending IIVs with the same tensions as before. The last eight bars of Dizzy Gillespies Woody n You follows this route, and its a challenging landscape to solo over. Play through this example to get a better feel for the melodic tension created as you move through the chord tones and tensions. To my ear, it has a sort of Monk-ish quality to it. The first two scales are ascending, but due to the range limitations on a 4-string bass, the last scale descends from the high Eb and ends on a low F, which is the 3rd of the final Dbmaj7 chord. The symmetrical diminished scale is a big part of the modern jazz vocabulary. Learning it will help you improvise through tough chord changes like these.

Extras
In jazz theory, the term tensions refers to the 9th, 11th, or 13th of a chord, also called the chords upper extensions. Altered tensions include the b9th, #9th, #11, and b13th. Prior to bebop, most jazz soloists relied mainly on the chord tonesroot, 3rd, 5th, and 7thfor building solos. Saxophonist Charlie Parker pioneered the use of the tensions.

Voice leading is the technique of giving melodic lines a smooth, stepwise contour as the chords change underneath. Theres another eight-note symmetrical diminished scale, built on a half-step/whole-step structure and derived from melodic minor scales 7th mode. The two scales are essentially the same; they just start on different steps.