What's this scale called ? Pentatonic with b5 and #7

[SlyVai]

To all you experts out there who have studied music theory and composition:

What do we call this scale ?

I know it’s pentatonic, in this case E minor pentatonic, with flat 5th (the blue note) and #7th, so it’ the #7th that is different, but when talking about it, I struggle to find a name. I tend to call it the Mustaine scale because he uses it alot but is there a conventional musical name for it ?
‘The Blues scale with #7th’ ?

The same question applies for the #3rd or flat 4th scale addition, which I guess can also be played with flat 5th and #7th altogether but never sounds right when I do that, seems to only be compatible with the flat 5th like so:

Anyway, is it simply ‘Blues Scale with flat 4th’ ?

[Judmeister]

it would be octatonic in nature with 8 notes . the inclusion of the natural 7th, as well as b7, could also say a minor blues bebop since you have the inclusion of flat and natural 7th and I’m saying natural as D# is natural to E Major. #7 would relate it to E minor. Bebop scales usually include a chromatic passing tone heading towards the root or another stable tone such as the 5. but that’s music theory for you. Some may call it super blues as well but that doesn’t really say what the function is at least to me. this will work over minor as well as dom 7th chords. As long as you know how to use it call it spaghetti. and power chords since you don’t have a third or 7th tone in the chord. Thing about theory is it analyses the thing after it’s been done. looking at it again it only has 7 tones however you could easily add the 2 to this and make it 8 lol.

[SlyVai]

Ha Super Blues ! I like that,
but yeh doesn’t really describe which variant is being used, unless you call the full Pentatonic with flat4th, flat5th and #7th Super Blues, that would make sense I think.

[Judmeister]

but really in my mind what happened is horn players were looking for a way to stretch out the scale in a way so that the root would land on the 1 or any other chord tone for that matter on the next measure so that it could work better. So to do this they added chromatic notes that worked in a musical sense so that the new scale would have 8 tones instead of seven.

[SlyVai]

Yes, makes sense and funny because I was listening to Zappa Black Napkins live earlier and noticed the horns were playing this scale, or maybe a slight variation, but seemed like it was, with 8 notes,

• duh(root), duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh(root), repeat

Black Napkins is a great simple chord progression to improvise over, I’ll try this scale over it tomorrow.

(edit, I mean I will try using the C# minor version, not the E minor version, as Black Napkins is C#min7, Dmaj7. By the way everyone says to use C# Phyrgian over those chords, but I find C# Dorian is better, even with the conflict between D# and D).

[Judmeister]

cool. From what I see and hear its 1 minor to b2 Major which appears to be Phrygian although both chords hang out for the same length so maybe Lydian even with the 7 minor going to the 1 depending on where you hear the tonic to be. definitely with the half-step approach, you could use passing tones for sure. SO maybe Vai likes Lydian because of Zappa’s influence on him.

[SlyVai]

Yeh I’m sure Vai is influenced a lot by Zappa he uses a lot of similar progressions and motifs, theres a lot of examples of that.
I always thought Vai’s Windows To The Soul was very similar to Black Napkins with the main chord progression being just 2 chords, minor key and with a 3/4 time signature and even a similar lead guitar melody is used for the main phrase.

[JakeEstner]

I have not seen this note set referred to as one single scale. However, in practice what it really is is just a minor pentatonic scale with some tones used in passing, and the conventional term might be “chromatic approach notes.” It would be common to play the A# and D# mostly when resolving up or down by a half step.

You might notice that usually when you hear this , any A# is followed by an A or a B, and any D# is followed by a D or an E. And more commonly would be to hear the B, A#, A, or A, A#, B - or D, D#, E, or E, D#, D.

So those are just called chromatic passing tones in conventional theory lingo (best of my knowledge.)

You hear something like this a lot:

but it would be much less common to have the A# and D# appear not in the context I just described:

(this is a pattern)

I think the second one is cooler but I don’t know if Dave Mustaine would agree.

PS: For consistency of vocabulary, general practice is to refer to interval degrees relative to the major scale, so E G A A# B D D# would be called 1, b3, 4, #4/b5, 5, b7, 7 . The D# is the major or “normal” seventh, and the D natural is the flatted seventh. This helps avoid confusion when comparing different scales. For example mixolydian and the minor pentatonic have a b7, major scale and lydian and harmonic minor have a 7. Mixolydian and lydian and the major scale have a 3 (major third), while minor pentatonic, minor scale, melodic minor, dorian, etc, have a b3 (minor third.)

PPS: Fun little tool from Noel Johnston: Voicing Modes Web App

[SlyVai]

I see, cool.

I learned something there, thanks. I always called it the 7th in the pentatonic but yeh it’s actually the b7 relative to the Major scale.

That tool is nice, don’t see the pentatonic in there though. The blues scale is there, and that Hybrid blues scale is close to the one we are discussing but has the 2nd as well.

Dave Mustaine plays that 1st scale, with the b5 and natural 7, as descending and ascending 4s in Holy Wars, well pretty much anyway, he does miss the top octave b5 and 7th, but it’s pretty cool.

[JakeEstner]

Wow that’s really funny, you’re right, there’s no pentatonic! I wonder if it was intentional.