Since I posted my article on 8 tone scales, I’ve gotten an embedded player. Here’s what the first of these 8 tone scales sounds like.

Lets start with Scale 1: H H H H H H 5.

What if we Put the Jump in the middle:

So, this sounds pretty good. It has a chromatic feel with a big intervalic jump, and that describes a lot of good melody lines. The Half steps could be made to work out with numerous chords. For example, lets say we want to play this over an A Major 7 Chord, starting on the third. Ascending, the downbeats would be C# G A B which are the third, seventh, root and ninth. That big jump lines up with chord tones.

If You start A Half step earlier you will also get an interval of a fifth lining up with the jump, but on the upbeats.

If we want to play an A Domiant 7th We have a tritone between the 3rd and the seventh. We could align the big fifth of a jump with the Root to the Fifth (A to E) But then we miss the third, arguably the most important tone for capturing the sound of the scale. If We put the jump starting on the third, we miss the 7th. If we put the jump on the 7th, we miss both the root and the third.

This scale may work better over a minor chord. The Jump from Minor third to 7th aligns nicely with the jump, skipping over the fifth.

We can lead in to the jump with a chromatic run: