Fretboard fluency

Over the last three months, we’ve been looking at the Melodic Minor scale’s seventh mode – Superlocrian (also known as the Altered scale), which is commonly applied over altered dominant chords. To refresh: altered dominants are dominant chords with alterations to the 5th and/or 2nd (9th) degrees: R- b 2-#2-3- b 5-#5- b 7.

As we can see from the formula above, the Superlocrian mode contains all the possible combinations of altered 5th and 2nd (9th) degrees in addition to the root, 3rd, 5th and b 7th of the dominant chord. Typically found within jazz and blues progressions, altered dominant chords function as a means of creating tension, which helps guide the listener’s ear towards the resolving tonic chord a 4th higher (or a 5th