Altered Dominant Scale
The altered dominant scale, also loosely called the altered scale, is so named because all the scale members that can be altered relative to the basic dominant scale (the Mixolydian mode), without losing the dominant quality, are altered. The scale includes both altered ninths (raised and lowered), and both altered fifths (raised and lowered). Starting on C, it contains the notes: C, D♭, E♭, F♭, G♭, A♭ and B♭. The altered fifths coincide enharmonically with the sharp eleventh and the flat thirteenth which would also be considered altered relative to their Mixolydian forms. The tonic, major third (as a diminished fourth), and dominant seventh are retained as essential to the dominant quality.
The scale can also be understood as a mode of the ascending melodic minor scale starting from the 7th scale degree. For a C7 chord, the C♯ melodic minor scale starting from B♯ (C enharmonically) produces the C altered dominant scale enharmonically.
This scale is also called the superlocrian scale, as it is indeed reminiscent of a locrian scale with a flattened 4th, but it is usually regarded as that of major quality.
Another name for this scale is the diminished-wholetone scale because the first tetrachord is that of a (half, whole) diminished scale and the second tetrachord is whole-tone (or locrian).
Read more about this topic: Jazz Scale
Famous quotes containing the words altered, dominant and/or scale:
“When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe.... The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others.”
—Janet Malcolm (b. 1934)
“That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)