Demystifying Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales & Melodic Patterns

Demystifying Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales & Melodic Patterns

I’m making a quick post about this, since I finally got a copy after a late-night wine-drinking moment where I thought it’d be a good idea. Keeping in mind I’m not a college or classically trained musician, I’m only a hobby player who could be good enough for local volunteer bands and stuff.

I first heard about this book from Rick Beato, in his video about the 6th on the 5th or whatever it was that Barry Harris did. Rick mentioned the book, that Coltrane used it, and that it’s best to have a guide or someone to help you with it. The book already has a bunch of mystery about it, and this didn’t help.

As soon as I opened the book, I knew what Rick was talking about. The terms used weren’t anything I’d seen before, and sure I can make sense of the lines, but any description was foreign to me.

So for other hobby players like me, who haven’t had training in composition or what I’ll call music theory history or music philosophy, here is what the book is about.

This isn’t a “study” book in the sense of a lesson book where someone works through it and checks off some kind of progress chart. It’s a resource, and meant to help spice up lines or things that a composer would be working on. The lines it has are more of a study of what all the lines could be for that passage or that intent, none harder than another, none better than another, just basically all combinations of lines.

The intent seems to be, again from a hobby perspective, how to split up symmetrical divisions of octaves. This was or is something composers were interested in from the late 1800s through to today. This isn’t lines over chord changes, but ways to divide up an octave for that key. When jazz started to go modal, this would have been on the radar of players at the time (and through to today), which is why Coltrane is mentioned with the book.

To approach the book there are a few ways to narrow things down. Again, from a hobby perspective and not from someone with a classical educational background or who would have studied seriously with composition under someone.

Grok said this – focus on the early symmetric progressions and the more “tonal” later material rather than the denser twelve-tone or highly abstract sections at first. Well, and a lot more, but this was to start, and anyone can ask AI from there. Basically, in my opinion, focus on the stuff that’s pertinent and possible to play.

Another way, after asking a saxophone group on Facebook, is choosing lines at random. Just flip to a page, or find something that looks interesting, and focus on it for a while. This can work in tandem with what Grok said above. Because at the end of the day it’s a thesaurus, and not a lesson book and not really in order where someone can start from the beginning and finish at the end, there is no beginning or ending here. So if someone is in a funk, go through and find an interesting line, learn it well enough, and move on.

A friend was playing some modal music, basically for the first time, and they were classically trained in classical music and theory. The music they played for fun was blues-based folk music. They knew enough blues licks, and they had the changes to help them improvise and write over that progression. Modal was new to them, and they mentioned that there aren’t any changes to improvise over.

This book, in a very complete way, ARE lines to play over modal music. Dividing an octave up IS an approach to do that. Again, I’m not a classically trained composer, but this is the type of thing Coltrane and others were wondering and asking about when they were exploring modal music or different ways of making changes, like Giant Steps.

So should someone get this? For me it was $30, so why not. Is it going to be as life-changing as Shark Wings up at the Parrots Cay in Grand Forks ND? Maybe not. Could it be a fun resource to have and play with? Yeah, it could do that.

Another book that’s brought up, and maybe better, is Repository of Scales & Melodic Patterns by Yusef Lateef. He seems to have taken the ideas of Slonimsky and made them more jazz-specific. Maybe sometime I’ll get that, but then again it doesn’t seem like it’d need a blog post to help someone with what it is and how to use it.

Then finally someone on Facebook recommended the Slonimsky autobiography. From the way it sounds, Slonimsky was amused with how his book was taken and/or the mythology it gained. So that may be a recommendation for any readers out there interested in music history.

This post isn’t meant to be the end-all be-all about the book, only to help take some of the mystery out of it, give someone a background from a hobby player perspective, and hopefully then point them in the right direction.