Altered Dominant Chords In Jazz

When you start out playing jazz, you will come across the term “Altered dominants” quite often and in this article I will explain a bit about altered dominant chords and how you can play over them.

Altered dominant chords are basically dominant seventh chords with non diatonic notes added to them to make them sound more tense than a regular dominant chord. The new real book describes and altered chord in jazz as a dominant chord, “in which neither the fifth nor the ninth appears unaltered” and which therefor “contains b5 &/or #5, and b9 &/or #9″

The main reseason that altered chords come up so frequently in jazz music is that they provide rich and tense sounding chords that allows an improviser to solo with more interesting and complex scales. Altered dominant chords are nothing more than standard dominant chords with one or more alterations to make a richer sounding chord.

How to play over an altered dominant chord

There are often several scale choices when it comes to playing over altered chords. The first thing you need to do when deciding what scale to play over a given altered chord is to look to see what the main alteration in the chord is and then find a scale with the same altered notes. For example if we want to play over a G7b9 chord then we need to use a dominant scale that also has a b9 tone present. Here is a list of the most common altered chords and a list of the best scales for playing over them

7b9 Chords

You can use the Phrygian domiant scale, altered scale or the half whole diminished scale.

7#9 Chords

You can use the altered scale for this scale. The 7#9 chord has both a major and minor third.

7b5 Chords

The best scale choices for playing over a 7b5 chord would be the Lydian Dominant scale, the whole tone scale or the altered scale

7#5 Chords

The 7#5 chord is probably best tackled with the altered scale

Other altered dominants

Altered dominant chords can often contain more than one alteration and in this case you would be best to choose the altered scale to play over them. An example of an altered chord with more than one alteraton would be a G7b5b9, G7b5#9, G7#5b9, or G7#5#9. Because the altered scale contains every possible alteration (a b5, #5, b9 and a #9) it is the best choice for dealing with altered chords with more than one altered note.

I hope you enjoyed this brief lesson on altered domiant chords in jazz and you can apply some of these ideas to your own playing. Despite the complicated sounding names, altered dominant chords really aren’t that scary. The more practive you have playing over these altered dominant chords, the more natural they will sound to your ear.