Once you've got those where you're happy, the Harmonic minor is a doddle as it's just the natural scale with a sharpened 7th. When this scale clicked for me I was suddenly in a whole new world of musical possibilities. And boy does that one note make a huge difference. Again, a nice, easy transition as you're only adding one new note. As you start playing with it you'll probably start to hear myriad of songs you recognise - some bands' entire careers are based almost exclusively on playing songs that rarely deviate from the Pentatonic.įrom Pentatonic I moved to minor Blues. I found it also helped making jumps up and down the sax. Then I moved to Pentatonic as that just involved not playing certain notes, rather than learning new ones. Given so many modern songs are in Am, Em and Dm (concert pitch), and that I'm hoping to one day join in with a jam somewhere, I chose those to concentrate on first. You can compose something in melodic minor if you like it's a fascinating scale in many ways, with interesting properties.What has worked for me up to now is first, learn the natural scale. (I'm not talking rules or laws here, of course - just "common practice". OTOH, lots of tunes are entirely in natural minor (aeolian) or dorian. No tune - AFAIK - is ever written wholly in melodic minor. Or, raise the 9th on a m7b5 chord (to avoid the dissonant b9), and whaddya know, another scale which looks like a melodic minor mode. Same when you raise the 11th on a dom13 (again for contextual reasons). Eg, alter the 5th and 9th of a dom7 chord (for voice-leading reasons), you happen to end up with a scale that resembles a melodic minor mode.
The use of other modes is mere coincidence. They are used because they are consonant, and melodic minor happens to be the result.
In jazz, melodic minor as an improvisation scale arises on the tonic because of the extensions employed: 6 or 9 on a m(maj7). (This is what is happening in that phrase in Autumn Leaves.) The raised 7th alone leaves an awkward augmented 2nd between 6th and 7th, which is solved by raising the 6th too. It's the alteration made when a melody approaches the tonic from below. "Melodic minor" is not really a scale in its own right (at least not in traditional harmony, and not really in jazz either). (The raised 7th appears in the chord, as a leading tone to the tonic, but not necessarily in the melody.)
It's the alteration made when a V-I cadence is required. "Harmonic minor" is not really a scale in its own right. They can be minor or major, depending either on the harmonic cadence, or on the phrasing of the melody. The minor key is based on a scale in which the 6th and 7th degrees are variable. That makes it a song in the conventional minor key. I guess since that section F# and B) is about tension maybe the P5 clash over the b5 in the F# chord wouldn't be a bad thing anyway even if you left the F#ø in?Ĭlick to expand.The final phrase of the first section uses the melodic minor scale. If you stay away from the b5 in the chord progression on the F# you could blow E melodic minor over the last three chords. I currently still like locrian over the ii and phrygian dominant over the B7 still, but don't like harmonic minor on the i and prefer to switch to E melodic minor on the i tonic. G major across ii V7 I IV and then E melodic minor across ii V7 i.) I guess this approach implies that in addition to treating the CMaj7 as part of the previous major ii V7 I group, you also don't add the b5 on the F# since that would make it harmonic minor otherwise. Couldn't one make an argument that autumn leaves is in E melodic minor since the melody is melodic minor? My reasoning is by treating the last three chords F#m7, B7, Em as an entity and handle the CMaj7 (since C wouldn't be in E melodic minor) as part of the first four chords instead of with the minor section? (i.e.
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