LJS 86: 7 Chords You Can Play the Melodic Minor Scale Over

Welcome to episode 86 of the LJS Podcast where today we are talking about the modes of the melodic minor scale and how you can use them to improvise over 7 different chords. The melodic minor scale can be a great tool to conceptualize some of these sounds. Listen in!
Listen to episode 86







The melodic minor scale is used a lot in jazz theory textbooks and classroom settings because it's a great way to conceptualize improvising over some more unique chords and chord extensions.
Now, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know how I feel about scales. They aren't really musical by themselves, and it's up to us to think of them as pitch collections and make real music out of them.
At the end of the day, I'm not really a chord-scale theory kind of a guy. It's just not the way I was trained. I come more from the school of learning solos and tunes by ear and learning the language by ear. However, using chord-scale theory can be a great way to look at things from a different angle.
I personally have been working on the modes of the melodic minor and how to relate them to particular chords. And I'll be honest, if you're not very familiar with music theory concepts this episode might be fairly meaty for you. But don't worry. I do my best to keep things simple, and at the end of the day, I would encourage you to take just one of these chords and put the melodic minor to practice.
The Melodic Minor Scale
Here's a melodic minor scale in concert C:

Here are the modes of the melodic minor scale. Remember, to keep things simple, just think of the modes as simply starting and ending on the different scale tones.

Using the Melodic Minor Over 7 Different Chords
Here are the chords mentioned in this episode. I'll list the spelling of the mode you can play beside each chord. Keep in mind, you could simply play the melodic minor root parent scale over all of these.
1. Cmin(maj7): C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B-C
2. D7(b9): D-Eb-F-G-A-B-C-D
3. Ebmaj7(#11) also add (#5): Eb-F-G-A-B-C-D-Eb
4. F7(#11): F-G-A-B-C-D-Eb-F
5. G7(b13): G-A-B-C-D-Eb-F-G
6. Amin7(b5): A-B-C-D-Eb-F-G-A
7. B7(alt): B-C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B
To put these to practice, just take one of these and work on it this week. Not all of these will help you, and you don't need to think about all of these chords this way. Pick one that connects with you and put it to work.
The next step is to turn these scales into music. Internalize these sounds and start creating melodies.
Further Resources
How to Play The Modes of the Melodic Minor Scale







Read the Transcript
What's up, what's up everybody. My name is Brent. I am the jazz musician behind the website, Learnjazzstandards.com, which is a blog and a podcast, all geared towards helping you become a better jazz musician. I am super pumped to be here. I'm equally excited that you're here, to hang out with me, and listen in, whether it's your first time ever listening to the show, or whether you're a regular listener. I just appreciate you being here. Now we've been having special guests on the show. Last week, we had Steve Nixon, from Free Jazz Lessons.com. That was an awesome show. We've been doing a lot of other great shows lately.
We're gonna have another special guest next week. But, we haven't done a teaching episode in a while. We haven't don't a music theory episode, and so today's episode, I'm gonna be talking about some music theory stuff. I'm kind of excited to do that, because, like I said, it's been a while, but also because today's episode, is kind of stuff that I'm personally exploring right now, whenever I have some down time,