For years scale and scaling up have been my north star relative to improvisation. Starting with western scales I evolved into modes such as the modes used in the blues, modes as defined by the Greeks, moving into scales prominent in non-western cultures such as Persian scales, Indian ragas, until I entered 20th century composers’ use of scales. Degas and the French artists were busy developing visual scales while Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Weber, Bartok, Babbitt and the electronic schools were developing the scales referred to in the literature (see Joel Leslie) as pitch classes.
I have been sidelined by the archaic concentration of jazz musicians on scales prominent in the blues, bebop, hard bop, and the development of free jazz. I thought I could fight my way around this block by figuring out chords and chord changes, but all I got were arguments from other musicians about what a particular pattern of notes were and how they ought to be represented as chords. My ear hears polychords and yet as I am coming to realize polychords are open to interpretation. My default to attempting to name a scale but with the inclusion of the actual notes I wanted to hear was helpful but actually only led to confusion. I would say a set of notes would be one chord, and I would be told that that was the incorrect, or wrong, chord.
I can now see that it would be fruitful to change my concept of chord to that of pitch class. This means the Hungarian folk tunes of Bartok can be seen from the perspective not of chord but of an elemental scale described more accurately as a pitch class. Bitonality is more accurately referred to as different sets of pitch classes. And in fact, a scale is a pitch class.
This makes more sense to me. Instead of seeking a chord I can seek a pitch class. I can formulate on the fly my own pitch classes. It also condenses my effort to see intervals as the way out of my morass because I can place dissonance as a form of pitch class. Atonality, twelve tone music, electronic music—all are different forms of pitch class, contrasting pitch classes, and even an escape from the constraints of scales, chords, and modes. If a mode is considered a pitch class, then I can formulate my own modes by thinking of them as scales. This makes so much more sense to me. And, most importantly to me, I do not need to get into arguments with my friends and collaborators about whether this set of notes constitutes one chord or the other.
