The Magic Scale and Symmetry

Sid Jacobs explores symmetrical scales for jazz guitar — how they're built, why they don't resolve like diatonic scales, and how to fold their modern, inside/outside sound into your lines and chord voicings. The starting point is Nicolas Slonimsky's famous Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, a mathematical approach to the 12 tones studied by players like Joe Diorio and John Coltrane.

What's covered

• Dividing the octave into 2, 3, 4, and 6 equal parts — tritones, major thirds, and the diminished seventh — to build symmetrical scales
• Why symmetrical scales are built on repeating intervals rather than the overtone series, and why they don't function in a 2-5-1 number system
• Slonimsky's pattern-building terms: infrapolation, interpolation, and ultrapolation, with the tetratonic scale as a working example
• Substituting diminished-scale chords for a dominant (e.g. in place of B7) to color traditional progressions
• Using the augmented scale over major 7#5 chords
• How these sounds connect to fourths and the inside/outside style — at home over chord changes and in abstract free jazz alike

This class pairs naturally with Sid's work on hearing harmony in a new way, and is for intermediate players who want to reconcile the atonal language with tonal chord changes.

• 40 pages of PDF materials included
• Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes