Yes, just when you thought it was safe to use just the scales you know, along comes the whole tone scale and one of its related chords - the augmented 7th. The whole tone is actually very easy to construct. You just take your root note - in this case, F - and go up two frets for each successive note. Thus, the F whole tone scale is:
F · G · A · B · C# · Eb
Note that most of the scales we've covered in these weekly installments have seven notes. The whole tone scale only has six.
One chord that fits well underneath a whole tone scale is the augmented 7th. What does augmented mean? Augmented means "raised" - meaning take a specific note and make it "sharp" or raise it by one fret. I think in most cases, it refers to the 5th of a chord. Thus, the augmented 7th is like your typical dominant chord (i.e. 1st, 3rd, 5th, b7th), except that the 5th is raised one fret (1, 3, #5, b7). Thus the notes for an F Aug7 are:
F Aug7 : F · A · C# · Eb
Note that all of the notes in an FAug7 chord are contained in the F whole tone scale. What does this mean? This means that an F whole tone scale will sound great over an F Aug7. But, don't take my word for it. Just play the example below.
