What Scale is This?

[JamPro]

Hello.  I have recently been woodshedding What Is This Thing Called Love.  I chose this song because I want to practice soloing over minor ii-V7-i, and this song provides plenty of opportunity to do that.  The song also forces the soloist to switch between minor and major a lot. 

 

I have been having trouble at the end of the B section where the song ends the B section with a dominant V: I'm having trouble making the solo lines bring out the dominant V sound and move smoothly back into the minor sound.  Today as I practiced it, what seemed to work best over this part of the song was this scale 1-2-3-4-5-b6-b7-1.

 

Does this scale have a name?  Mixolydian variant?  Barry Harris dominant?

 

Can anyone suggest another way to play over that dominant V at the end of the B section in What Is This Thing?  Intellectually, it seems to me that an altered scale should work over that dominant V at the end of the B section.  So far, I can't make it sound right.  Either it doesn't seem to mesh smoothly with the minor that I play in the previous measure (tonic harmonic minor scale), it doesn't sound properly major and dominant, or it doesn't seem to mesh smoothly with the minor that I play as the A section comes around again.

[Irena]

I'd call that the MM5 scale (melodic minor starting on the 5th degree), but there may be a catchier name for it.

[stoken6]

So it's a V-Im movement, and your scale degrees "1-2-3-4-5-b6-b7-1" refer to the V chord? So it's a kind of V mixolydian b6, which is the 5th mode of the melodic minor of your IV chord. And of course the IVm-I movement is a classic (the "Christmas cadence" - it's all over that Mariah song). 

 

OR

 

your scale degrees "1-2-3-4-5-b6-b7-1" refer to the I chord? The b6 and b7 here would be the b9 and #9 of the V, which hints at the dominant-diminished or altered-dominant scale, both of which are often used over dominant chords. (But the rest of the scale would be the regular old Mixolydian).

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Delaware Dave]

So, is sweet home alabama in D or G?

 

🤣

[jerrythek]

19 hours ago, Irena said:

I'd call that the MM5 scale (melodic minor starting on the 5th degree), but there may be a catchier name for it.

I found this article, which gives names to all the permutations of the melodic minor scale:

https://www.learnjazzstandards.com/blog/learning-jazz/jazz-theory/modes-melodic-minor-scale/

 

[marino]

Not a standard name, but I'd call it the Melodic Dominant scale.

[Docbop]

Seeing threads like this playing name that scale makes me understand why when I was lucky to hang with some progressive (free) Jazz musician why they prefer to just call things "pitch collections".  That naming it some scale or mode people fall into a hole of preconceived ways of playing over that named set of notes.