Don’t worry if you haven’t heard the term “Scale of Chords” before, I’m not sure how well known the phrase is. I learnt the phrase from legendary Jazz Pianist Barry Harris, however, I first came across the idea in Don Mock’s instruction video; The Blues from Rock to Jazz. Barry’s approach is slightly different to what I’m explaining here, but I see this as an offshoot of his initial ideas.

You’ve probably seen people use this idea many times, it essentially looks like advanced chord and inversion playing, which it is but the focus isn’t on the chord  as much as it’s on the melody you create as you move around the inversions. Player’s like Cory Wong, Tomo Fujita, as well as classic R’n’B and Funk guitarists (Think Nile Rogers) and virtually every jazz guitarist all use this technique whether they know it or not. It’s an essential technique for creating interesting rhythm parts on static chords as well as hooks and riffs and creating chord melodies.

It’s a very simple concept, you take a chord and a scale that fits it, then you learn a voicing of that chord to go under each note of the scale. You climb the scale and support each scale note with a chord underneath.

Although the top note changes, we are going to keep the chord the same type.

First we are going to focus on Dominant chords and the mixolydian scale.  Later we will explore doing this in Major and Minor Keys.

In the Key of C, the mixolydian scale is C,D,E,F,G,A,Bb

So we need to find a C Dominant voicing with a C on top, then a C dominant voicing with a D on top, Then a C dominant voicing with an E on top, until we have the whole scale harmonized over C.

The only thing that takes some knowledge is knowing your possible dominant chords. We can harmonize our melody with C7, C9, C13, C7sus etc. You can be creative with which chords you create, the only rule is they all be diatonic to the C Mixolydian Scale.

This isn’t about building a system of voicings that all move up stepwise with perfect voice leading, its about finding an option for each melody note individually that you like. Using a systematic approach will possibly lead to voicings that sound ugly and don’t fall under the fingers practically. I’m going to show you the voicings I use, but highly recommend exploring and creating your own.