Glossary
Avoid Note
Glossary
In jazz theory, each mode may have one or more avoid notes or intolerably dissonant notes, that are known to produce an undesirable effect when sustained as melody notes against the notes of the harmony. For example, in the Key of C Major, the fourth scale degree (or eleventh), the note C, is avoided when improvising or playing a melody over the G Dom 7 chord or G Mixolydian mode. This also tells us which available tensions or extensions can be used to form chords that will be compatible with each mode.
See All C Chords, C Major (Diatonic), C Ionian (Major), and Ionian (Major) for the specific avoid notes for a given mode or mode type.
Tymoczko 2011 (Ch. 10) explains avoid notes as a way to avoid obscuring the voice-leading skeleton of the underlying progression, for example a ii-V-I progression, but allowing basically any other notes of the mode in the chords of the harmony. In the previously mentioned example in C Major—playing over a dominant V chord such as G Dom 7 or G Dom 13—playing the note C too early would obscure the chord change to the I (tonic) at the end of the progression, where C goes from being the avoid note to being the root itself.
In jazz theory, each mode may have one or more avoid notes or intolerably dissonant notes, that are known to produce an undesirable effect when sustained as melody notes against the notes of the harmony. For example, in the Key of C Major, the fourth scale degree (or eleventh), the note C, is avoided when improvising or playing a melody over the G Dom 7 chord or G Mixolydian mode. This also tells us which available tensions or extensions can be used to form chords that will be compatible with each mode.
See All C Chords, C Major (Diatonic), C Ionian (Major), and Ionian (Major) for the specific avoid notes for a given mode or mode type.
Tymoczko 2011 (Ch. 10) explains avoid notes as a way to avoid obscuring the voice-leading skeleton of the underlying progression, for example a ii-V-I progression, but allowing basically any other notes of the mode in the chords of the harmony. In the previously mentioned example in C Major—playing over a dominant V chord such as G Dom 7 or G Dom 13—playing the note C too early would obscure the chord change to the I (tonic) at the end of the progression, where C goes from being the avoid note to being the root itself.