What are minor scales and how do we form them? In this post, we cover the three types of minor scales: natural, harmonic and melodic and their formulas.
A minor scale is a sequence of musical notes in which the third scale degree is a minor third above the tonic. The notes A–B–C–D–E–F–G form a prototypical minor scale. There are three common types of minor scales: the natural minor scale, the melodic minor scale, and the harmonic minor scale.
Melodic Minor Scale - Everything You Need To Know Like all scales, melodic minor has its own unique sound, both melodic and harmonic (despite the name!), created by a series of intervals. Its common usage in jazz has seen it dubbed the "jazz minor scale". But it's versatile enough to complement any style of music.
Minor melodic scales are different on the way down. So what happens to the degrees of the scale? Let’s take a look. We’ll look more closely at one of our new scales, E minor melodic. First we’ll write out the ascending scale, then add the degrees of the scale under each note: Look at the top end of the scale: C# is the 6th and D# is the 7th degree of the scale. Now we’ll write out the ...
Nothing prevents you from playing the D minor melodic scale in this case too (the dominant chord allows many “daring” options), but the C minor melodic scale would be more advisable for the simple fact that the G7 chord belongs to the key of C minor melodic.
Melodic Minor Scales The Melodic Minor Scale differs from the Natural Minor Scale by the sixth and seventh notes, which are raised one semitone (see scale degree overview below). This scale is kind of peculiar since it is sometimes played differently ascending and descending. Jazz: The sixth and seventh notes are always raised, exactly as the pictures below illustrate. This is the most modern ...