Jazz scales

hey,

I'm somewhat new to jazz and i was wondering what scales Wes Montgomery used thanks.

anybody????????????????

A lot of times, he used just the plain old major scale with occasional alterations such as the b9, #9, b5, #5, and b7 (read: he used every note available). When to use these? Whenever they sound good! Use your ear when you solo. Play a jam track, like a one chord vamp and listen to how each note interacts with the chord.

Check out a book such as "The Best of Wes Montgomery" and you can study how he soloed.

thanks but, could u give a diagram of the scale with the extra notes or a link to one? thanks again...

Dude, I hate to say, but learning a certain scale is not gonna make you be able to play jazzy... I suggest listening to jazz songs and trying to emulate what they play... listen to a song a hundred times until you can play it with him (AND DON'T CHEAT BY LOOKING UP THE TABS!!). This is how all the greats learned to play, and it's so you get the sound of jazz in your ears and in your fingers...

Jazz is by far the most complex style when it comes to improvising. Your question has a complex answer:

Jazz cats uses ALL the scales, depending on the context that the chords and/or harmony imply.
They tend to rely on arpeggios, to target the notes that are important in the progression, and they use a tension/release pattern that implies notes that are NOT in any scale/arpeggios that the harmony suggests...
That means that any time, you might play ANY note in a jazz tune, as long as it comes and goes somewhere. My answer is stupid, but it is exact :)
Learn tunes, Jamie Abersold has a list of them (so what, summertime etc...) and play them, over and over.

Hi guys! Is there any guitar jazz jam' online? thx

You should re-phrase that as what scales "didn't" Wes Montgomery use. To play jazz you should have a conceptual knowledge of all the major scales and modes, the 3 forms of minor, the melodic minor and it's modes and how to apply them as altered scales, whole tone, diminished, dominant diminished, and the blues scale. That's what Wes used.

Over every chord, there are so many scale choices to use, bebop, the modes, the melodic minor modes, the harmonic minor scale possibilities, pentatonics.... the list goes on.

But if you just go by that you won't get anywhere, because your playing will sound like a scale. It's important to learn to create melodic ideas in jazz, you can just sweep up and down different scale patterns (though I still admire the people who can do that).


You also have to learn how to flow these ideas into eachother, this is hard because most jazz tunes change keys every few bars, so you have to use a different motif.


Pick up some of the Jamey Aebersold books (there's a link to his site on my page... if you wanna check them out), listen to Wes Montgomerey, Charlie Christian, Pat Metheny.... etc. That will help you. Figure out some licks you hear in your head, and apply them.


Also, try some websites, such as jazzguitar.com... or search on google for other stuff.... eventually you'll be able to play smoothly in all types of situations.


Good Luck! Jazz is a hard artform to master, and I put jazz musicians at the top as far as overall musicianship, because they have to learn so many things and apply them. It's complex stuff man... it also helps to be able to read music up and down the neck, and to know what the chord symbols mean.