Jazz scale
A jazz scale is any musical scale used in jazz. Many "jazz scales" are common scales drawn from Western European classical music, including the diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic (or diminished), and the modes of the ascending melodic minor. All of these scales were commonly used by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, often in ways that directly anticipate jazz practice.[2] Some jazz scales, such as the bebop scales, add additional chromatic passing tones to the familiar diatonic scales.
The altered dominant scale, also loosely called the altered scale, is so named because all the scale members that can be altered relative to the basic dominant scale (the Mixolydian mode), without losing the dominant quality, are altered. The scale includes both altered fifths (♭5 and ♯5) and both altered ninths (♭9 and ♯9).
The altered fifths coincide enharmonically with the ♯11 and the ♭13 which would also be considered altered relative to their Mixolydian forms. The tonic, major third (as a diminished fourth), and dominant seventh are retained as essential to the dominant quality.
The scale can also be understood as a mode of the ascending melodic minor scale starting from the 7th scale degree. For a C7 chord, the C♯ melodic minor scale starting from B♯ (C enharmonically) produces the C altered dominant scale enharmonically.
This scale is also called the super-Locrian scale, as it is indeed reminiscent of a Locrian scale with a ♭4, but it is usually regarded as that of major quality. Another name for this scale is the diminished whole-tone scale because the first tetrachord is that of a diminished scale and the second tetrachord is whole-tone.