#Scales & Lick Categories

A catalog of every scale Mankunku knows and every category in the lick catalog, with notes on what each is used for in the music. This is reference material — flip to it when you need a quick reminder of what Lydian Dominant works over, or whether a Bird-style line lives in the Bebop or ii-V-I category.

#Scales

The app's scale catalog holds 33 scales in seven families. Within each family, scales share a parent key (the major modes are all rotations of one major scale; the melodic minor modes are all rotations of one melodic minor scale; and so on).

Not all 33 are equally visible. The Scales page in the app shows twenty of them (marked ● below), grouped by family with their degree formulas. The daily key draws on twelve scale types, which unlock one after another — Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic, Major (Ionian), Blues (Minor Blues), Dorian, Mixolydian, Minor (Aeolian), Lydian, Melodic Minor, Altered, Lydian Dominant, Bebop Dominant; see The Daily Key. The rest are there for the licks and the backing harmony.

The "Used over" column tells you the chord types each scale is the standard color choice for.

#Major modes

The seven rotations of the major scale.

The two most common modal-vamp scales are Dorian (think So What, Impressions) and Mixolydian (think any blues or rock-influenced jazz). Lydian is the bright "movie soundtrack" sound (think Days of Wine and Roses or Maiden Voyage's opening). Locrian is the half-diminished scale you reach for on the ii of a minor ii-V-I.

#Melodic minor modes

The seven rotations of the ascending melodic minor scale. These are the workhorse scales of bebop and post-bop reharmonization.

The two most-used members are Lydian Dominant (over a non-functional dominant — V7/IV, or a tritone sub) and Altered (over the V of a minor ii-V-I, or over any V chord where you want to maximize tension). Locrian Natural 2 is a more melodically friendly substitute for Locrian on the ii of a minor ii-V-I.

#Harmonic minor modes

Less common than the melodic minor family, but the Phrygian Dominant mode (5th rotation) is essential for Spanish/flamenco color and minor-key cadences.

#Symmetric scales

Scales built from a repeating interval pattern. They have no "tonic" in the usual sense.

The diminished scales come in two flavors: start with a whole step (over a dim7 chord) or start with a half step (over a dominant 7b9 chord). The Half-Whole is what you reach for on a V7b9 — every common altered tension is in it (b9, #9, #11, 13).

#Pentatonic

Five-note scales. The bedrock of jazz, blues, gospel, rock, and a thousand folk traditions.

McCoy Tyner's quartal pentatonic playing, Wes Montgomery's blues pentatonic, Herbie Hancock's modal pentatonic — three different sounds, all built on the same five-note scaffold.

#Blues

Pentatonic + an added chromatic note (the "blue note").

The minor blues scale (with the b5) is the "default" blues scale most people think of. The major blues is the same shape rotated — it's the major pentatonic with a chromatic between the 2 and the 3. Use it for swing-era and gospel-influenced blues; the minor blues scale is the rock and modern blues sound.

#Bebop

Eight-note scales — a major or minor mode with one chromatic passing note added so that chord tones land on strong beats when the scale is played in eighth notes.

The trick: an eight-note scale played in eighths covers a whole bar of 4/4 with chord tones falling on every downbeat. This is the central rhythmic engineering of bebop. Bird and Dizzy played these scales constantly; if you transcribe their lines, you'll find bebop scale fragments stitched together with arpeggios and enclosures.

#Lick categories

The catalog holds 1123 licks — 652 written by hand and 471 built by the combinatorial generator (see the end of this page) — in eighteen harmonic categories (plus "Uncategorized" for your own licks), and it populates all eighteen. Each corresponds to a harmonic context.

The minor-key categories are stored in C minor and labelled as minor keys (Dm, Gm …) wherever they appear; in Modal and Pentatonic the minor lines (Dorian, Aeolian, minor pentatonic) read as minor on their own. The sections below walk through the largest groupings; the rest are smaller chord- and pattern-focused collections that round out the catalog. Counts will drift as licks are added. (The category pills in the lick editor also offer Triad Pairs — the category the triad-pair trick belongs to; no catalog licks are filed there.)

Eight additional hand-written collections feed the categories above rather than standing on their own: Major 4th & 7th (40 licks) and its volume 2 (40 more), which land mostly in ii-V-I (Maj) and Bebop with a few in Digital Patterns and Major Chord; the blues blue-note collection (75 licks) in Blues; and four colour-tone collections in Modal — Lydian #4, Dorian 6, Aeolian b6 and Mixolydian b7, 40 licks each; and the Major Pentatonic first lines (40 licks) in Pentatonic.

Note that the Enclosures category here is a set of fixed figures, all built by the combinatorial generator. The device itself — enclosures as a formula you improvise with, alongside triad pairs — is drilled separately under Tricks, and doesn't live in this catalog at all.

#Beginner Cells (55 licks, filed under Pentatonic and Blues)

Two- and three-note minimal cells, designed for difficulty levels 1–5. The on-ramp into the catalog — short enough that beginners can hear them, recognize them, and play them back without getting overwhelmed.

• 10 major-pentatonic 2-note intervals
• 10 minor-pentatonic 2-note intervals
• 10 major-pentatonic 3-note cells
• 10 minor-pentatonic 3-note cells
• 5 blues 3-note cells
• 5 neighbor-tone and mixed patterns
• 5 blues 2-note intervals

#ii-V-I (Maj) (66 hand-written, 120 in all)

The most fundamental jazz cadence: minor-7 → dominant-7 → major-7, resolving down a fifth. In C: Dm7 → G7 → Cmaj7.

The category covers the full spectrum:

• Levels 10–25: Basic diatonic resolutions, chord-tone arpeggios.
• Levels 25–40: Eighth-note lines, approach notes into chord tones.
• Levels 40–55: Chromatic approaches, enclosures around target notes.
• Levels 55–75: Extended bebop lines drawing on the vocabulary of Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Stitt.

#Blues (205 hand-written, 257 in all)

12-bar blues vocabulary, mostly over a static C7 with some I–IV variants (C7 → F7 in the right places). The bulk of these come from two collections — the main blues set (120 licks) and the blue-note set (75) — with the remainder from beginner cells and the combinatorial generator.

• Levels 10–25: Basic blues-scale patterns.
• Levels 25–40: Blue-note bends, call-and-response shapes.
• Levels 40–65: Extended blues vocabulary with chromatic motion. Material in the spirit of T-Bone Walker, Grant Green, Freddie Hubbard.

#Bebop (37 hand-written, 79 in all)

Long lines built on bebop scales, chromatic passing tones, and characteristic shapes from the bebop tradition.

• Levels 25–40: Bebop-scale patterns, passing tones.
• Levels 40–55: Enclosures, chromatic approaches.
• Levels 55–75: Extended bebop lines, including a Parker turnaround, a Dizzy high-register figure, an Ornithology fragment.

#ii-V-I (Min) (15 hand-written, 83 in all) — minor-key

The minor counterpart to ii-V-I (Maj). In C minor: Dø7 → G7alt → C-7 (the curated lines; the Lick Practice backing plays the V as G7♭9, from Phrygian Dominant). Different scales — Locrian Natural 2, Altered, Aeolian — and a darker, more chromatic color. These licks are stored in C minor and labelled as minor keys.

• Levels 25–40: Basic minor ii-V resolutions.
• Levels 40–55: Altered-scale vocabulary.
• Levels 55–75: Advanced lines in the spirit of Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson.

#Pentatonic (95 hand-written, 200 in all)

Pentatonic vocabulary that works over multiple harmonic contexts — a major-pentatonic line works over Cmaj7, C7, and many other situations because the pentatonic notes are a subset of the major scale.

• Levels 1–3 (Major Pentatonic first lines): forty lines over Cmaj7 in even half notes, the only rhythm the difficulty rubric rates this low — two-note steps at level 1, the major third and three-note lines at level 2, four-note turns within a fourth at level 3. Major Pentatonic is the scale every player starts in, and before them its first three levels served four or five two-note cells. By the subset rule they also play in Major, Lydian and Mixolydian sessions (and, adapted like every single-chord exercise, in Melodic Minor, Altered and Lydian Dominant), which thins the colour tone in beginner Lydian and Mixolydian sessions from at least half the phrases to between one in six and one in three at levels 1–5 (Andy's call, 2026-10-07).
• Levels 8–20: Basic major and minor pentatonic patterns, sequences.
• Levels 20–45: McCoy Tyner-style fourths, Wes Montgomery shapes, Herbie Hancock-flavored funky patterns, pentatonic superimpositions.

#Modal (170 hand-written, 187 in all)

Sustained-mode vocabulary for static-harmony tunes. So What is one chord per eight bars; Impressions is the same; Maiden Voyage sustains modal harmony over long stretches. This is the territory.

• Levels 1–41 (colour tones): four collections of forty lines, each sounding the note that defines its mode, the short ones at levels 1–14 so a newly unlocked mode sounds like itself from its first phrase.

  • Lydian #4 over Cmaj7 — the #4 against its neighbours, the tritone from the root, the whole-tone climb 1-2-3-#4, the D triad over C that makes the chord a maj7#11.
  • Dorian 6 over Cm7 — the minor-six arpeggio and pentatonic, the major IV triad inside the minor key, the b3–6 tritone, the 9-11-13 upper structure, stacked fourths from the 6th.
  • Aeolian b6 over Cm7 — the b6–5 sigh, the b7-b6-5 lament, the Andalusian descent, the minor iv and bVI triads, Fm7 over the tonic.
  • Mixolydian b7 over C7 — the 3–b7 guide tones, the dominant shell, the dominant seventh and ninth arpeggios, 3-to-9, the bVII triad, the scale from the 3rd up to the root.

• Levels 15–35: So What motif, the Dorian characteristic 6th, Coltrane-style Dorian patterns, Lydian floats.

• Levels 35–55: Wayne Shorter angular lines, the Impressions motif, Phrygian color, Hancock-style Dorian vamps.

#Rhythm Changes (7 licks)

The Gershwin "I Got Rhythm" cycle — a I-vi-ii-V repeating pattern in the A section, with a bridge that cycles dominants down a major third or fourth. The bebop test for technical command at speed.

• Levels 30–65: A-section arpeggios, bridge dominant cycles, turnaround patterns. Oleo and Anthropology excerpts.

#Ballad (7 licks)

Slower, more lyrical phrases with sustained notes and space.

• Levels 25–55: Excerpts and ornamentations in the spirit of Body and Soul, Misty, Round Midnight, Lush Life. Chet Baker–style space, ornamental turns.

#Difficulty bands

Each lick has a difficulty level (1–100), displayed as one of ten bands.

Almost the whole catalog sits between 1 and 70: 25 licks reach the Advanced band (61–70), a single hand-written line reaches Expert (71–80), and nothing is rated higher. The Licks page itself filters only by free-text search and by progression (over your own book), not by difficulty band — the band table above is just the reference for reading a lick's difficulty label. (Community browsing does have a Max difficulty filter.)

A lick's band shows on its detail page, in a colour that runs from green (easy) through amber to brick red (hard). Your Tonal Mastery and scale levels borrow the same ten names — Beginner to Virtuoso — on a teal-to-brass colour ramp instead, so that high reads as achievement rather than danger.

#Combinatorial licks

In addition to the hand-written licks, the catalog includes 471 phrases generated by pairing a set of scale patterns (sequences of scale degrees) with rhythm templates (durations and offsets). Only musically valid pairings get produced: the shape has to fill the rhythm exactly — once, or repeated two or three times, each repeat allowed to step up or down the scale like a sequence — and its scale family has to suit the pattern.

The combinatorial licks fill out the difficulty bands with variations the curators wouldn't have written by hand because they'd be tedious to write out one at a time. Internally they carry source: 'combined' (and a combined tag), which distinguishes them from the hand-written phrases. They're part of the curated ear-training catalog, which the personal Licks page doesn't surface, so there's no in-app toggle to filter them out.