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Progression Editor

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I bought Harmony Navigator last week and really like it. I have a large palette I work off of and it's helping me find some really nice jazz progressions. My question is about Edit>>>Current Progression. After I record a progression and then open the editor window I would like to try different scales for the melody instead of the one which was automatically chosen. I see when I click on the vertical button in the harmony sub-section I get a list of other scales to choose which seem to be ranked in some manner. How do I assign other additional scales, maybe those that have a much more dissonant nature (like C half-wholetone against a C major 7 harmony). That may seem odd but I've been studying the George Russell theory lately which he began writing in the late 50's and was used by Coltrane, Miles and others which taught that on a long stationary section (on same chord) you might start with a scale against it which is very consonant and then progressively work towards a more chromatic and dissonant climax. So if I have a long section in the editor on the same chord (say 16 bars of C major 7) I may want the fisrt 4 bars to play with C lydian followed by 4 of C lydian augmented then 4 of C whole-halftone and finally 4 of C half-wholetone. Is it possible to get at these more unlikely scale choices to develop a more free-jazz feel?

Thanks - Paul


Mo., 16.03.2009 - 19:47 Permalink

Sure, you can use any scale over a chord, provided the chord is a subset of the scale (and the scale is in the catalog). That is, scale and chord must at least share the notes of the chord.

If you have Cmaj7, the major seventh somewhat restricts the set of possible scales. Try again with a plain C chord and you'll see a lot more scales to pick from.

In case you deliberately /want/ the major seventh to be part of a scale where it normally isn't, go to the catalog and create the respective scale. This is best done by cloning the most similar scale. Voilá.

Andre