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The whole tone scale is often one of the first symmetrical scales that many guitarists
explore in their studies and is a cool-sounding dominant 7th scale that you can use to add
tension to your 7th chords.
The whole tone scale is a symmetrical scale with only one interval between each note: the
whole step.
When doing so, you form a scale that contains the 3rd, #11, #5 and b7 intervals (among
others), which is why you can apply this scale to any 7#5 chord in your playing, or to any
dominant 7th chord when you want to bring a #11 and #5 sound to that chord change.
Use the whole tone scale to play over dominant augmented chords (G whole tone scale over
G7#5 for example).
In this lesson, you will learn how to build and apply the whole tone scale to your jazz
guitar playing. You will learn how to play various fingerings for this scale, apply scale
patterns, learn common whole tone scale licks, and a sample blues solo that uses this scale
in its construction.
The whole tone scale is a hexatonic scale, which means it contains 6 notes.
To help you visualize how the whole tone scale is constructed, here is a layout of the
interval structure:
Formula 1 9 3 #11 #5 b7
The most famous use of the whole tone scale in popular music is in the intro of Stevie
Wonder’s You Are The Sunshine Of My Life.
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Here are the guitar tabs for the intro, the whole tone scale is used on the G7 in bars 3 and
4:
A famous example in jazz music is the intro of McCoy Tyner on Wayne Shorter’s jazz
standard Juju:
Other jazz standards featuring the whole tone scale are One Down, One Up (John
Coltrane), and many of Thelonious Monk‘s compositions and solos, including Four in One
and Trinkle-Tinkle.
As you can hear, the whole tone scale has a very distinctive sound that can easily be too much
if used too often. The scale is great to add some variation to your dominant playing though,
just use it sparingly.
Here is a G whole tone scale with the root note on the 6th string, moving up in position
from that starting note.
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Moving on, here is an in-position C whole tone scale, starting on the 5th string and moving
up in position from that tonic note.
The next G whole tone scale begins on the 6th string and uses a shifting fingering to move
up from that starting point. When doing so, you are playing 3 notes on each string, using
the same shape on each string as you climb your way up the fretboard.
The final scale in this section is a C whole tone scale that begins on the 5th string and uses
a shifting fingering to move up the fretboard from there.
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Once you have worked out any of these whole tone scales, put on a backing track, starting
with 7th chords or 7#5 chords before moving on to ii-V-I’s and other progressions, and
practice soloing over those backing tracks.
Each pattern is written ascending up the scale shape, but feel free to use them
descending as well.
The first scale pattern features ascending 3rds up the scale. This means that you play the
first note of the scale, followed by the 3rd note, then the 2nd note, followed by the 4th note,
and so on.
You will now reverse that pattern by applying descending 3rd intervals to your whole tone
scale practice routine.
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In the next pattern, you will combine the first two patterns as you play up the first 3rd and
down the second 3rd interval, continuing that alternating pattern throughout the scale.
The final pattern features the reverse of the previous scale pattern, as now you are
beginning with an ascending 3rd, followed by a descending third.
As was the case with the scale fingerings, once you have any of these scale patterns under
your fingers, put on a backing track and begin to solo over 7th and 7#5 chords using the
patterns from this section to build your improvised lines and phrases.
G aug G B D#
1 3 #5
A aug A C# E#
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1 3 #5
B aug B D# F##
1 3 #5
C# aug C# E# G##
1 3 #5
1 3 #5
F aug F A C#
1 3 #5
This means you can start by playing a G augmented triad over G7#5 and go up or down the
guitar neck every 2 frets, such as in this example:
The first lick uses the G whole tone scale to solo over a G7#5 chord, the most direct
application of this scale in a soloing situation.
The second lick uses the G whole tone scale over a G7 chord in a short ii-V-I progression in
the key of C major, bringing a 7#5 sound to that part of the progression.
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Listen & Play Along
The final lick in this section uses the G whole tone scale over the V7 chord as well as the
VI7alt chord in a ii-V-I-VI progression in the key of C major.
After learning these three sample licks, try writing out a few licks of your own over these,
and other, chord progressions using the whole tone scale to outline each 7th chord in those
progressions.
Each four-bar section of the solo is written as a stand-alone phrase, so feel free to learn
the solo one phrase at a time and then bring all 3 phrases together after that.
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The Whole Tone Scale For Guitar was last modified: May 28th, 2018 by Matt Warnock &
Dirk Laukens
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