The idea is to avoid F natural since it conflicts with the leading tone of G minor. Interestingly enough, Chopin uses harmonic minor on the way down, and melodic on the way up.but the downward bit made sense because that was a D7 (b9) chord. Not surprising, considering Chopin's love of Bach. (Don't ask me who "they" is I'm not that well versed in the history of it all, but something about 18th century counterpoint should lead you in the right direction) In some contexts, melodic minor is natural on the way up, and flatted on the way down (because you really only need to make the change to a leading tone if the melody is heading for the tonic), but on the piano, usually it's both up and down. So they raised the sixth degree as well to obtain - you guessed it - melodic minor. Now, you could leave it at that (that scale is called harmonic minor), but melodically that augmented second from the flatted sixth to the natural seventh degree sounds kind of weird. (For example, in F minor, a melody containing Eb -> F would be modified to E -> F.the implied tonality is C7 -> Fm) So whenever a voice was on the 7th degree, and was resolving to the tonic, they would raise it a half step so that it was the leading tone. The key thing is that in the natural minor scale, the leading tone is missing, and so it just doesn't sound as epic/powerful. Here is the table of harmonic minor scales in all 12 keys.It's not just Chopin, the idea has been around for a while. Harmonic minor scale is defined by the following formula: Here is a table of natural minor scales in all 12 keys: Scaleġ2 natural minor scales with notes Harmonic Minor scales It is most often described by the following formula: Natural minor scale (sometimes called simply minor scale) is derived from the major scale by lowering 3rd 6th and 7th intervals. There are several types of minor scales that you should be aware of: natural minor, melodic minor, and harmonic minor. Next we have the harmonic minor scale and the melodic minor scale. That’s why I have my students learn as much as possible without relying on written sheet music. The numbers are modified with sharps (#) and flats(b) to produce different footprints and thus different scales. Knowing all your scales in all 12 keys is a prerequisite for anyone who wants to get serious about improvising. Major scale is a basic scale in music and it is used as a starting point for any other scale, thus it is often encoded with numbers like this: Same procedure can be carried out starting from any of the 12 notes. 12 major and 12 minor scales and arpeggios. 12 major and 12 minor five finger cadence.
ALL 12 MELODIC MINOR SCALES DOWNLOAD
Here are all the Harmonic Minor Scales written out with all the sharps and flats as accidentals and also how they would appear written out in their key signature. enter your email so i can Get you your free download - 12 major and 12 minor five finger scales. We will end up with a scale that is familiar to us all: This type of minor scale are called Melodic Minor Scales and they are different to Natural Minor Scales in that the sharps and flats don't follow the same pattern as the major scales. We start with note C and move a step up to D, then another step up to E, then half-step to F, and so on. To make this part of music theory more tangible let’s build a C major scale. It is worth memorizing this step pattern by heart so you can easily construct scales on the fly without having to think of the actual notes.
ALL 12 MELODIC MINOR SCALES SERIES
Same series of whole and half steps is used to construct any major scale in any key. This footprint is a set intervals (whole and half steps) between them.įor the major scale this footprint is as follows: Major scalesĮach scale is has a particular footprint that makes it sound unique. If you are serious about understanding music theory it is a good idea to look into some of those exotic scales at some point, but if you are a beginner you should start with major and minor scales which are the basic building blocks of most music heard today. Most scales contain anywhere from 1 (monotonic scale) to 12 notes (chromatic scale), but there are also scales using microtones. A musical scale is a very particular set of notes that can be used to construct melodies and chords.