Music Theory: The Minor Scale

Hello everybody and welcome back to this thing where I teach you VERY FUN music theory!! This time we will be going over something a little different: the Minor Scale.

To start off, the first minor scale you should learn is A minor, the relative minor of C. This scale is called the relative minor because it uses the exact same notes as C, but the root note is now an A (Hewitt 111).

It looks like this:

Through your practice of the major scale, you have probably realized that it sounds kind of happy, or uplifting. The minor scale is the opposite, creating a darker more somber feeling in the songs it is used in. It the A natural minor scale sounds like this:

This is a scale I use in a majority of my songs, or at least what I start with in my chord productions, although, sometimes the song switches into the relative major key, C. Also, because it has this relation to C, it is very easy to learn and practice. But if you want to learn more natural minor scales, count all of the intervals (2 1 2 2 2 2 1) and transpose them to other notes.

But that is not where the magic stops. There are two more kinds of basic minor scales! "Classical composers were dissatisfied with the way in which the natural minor mode lent itself to their purposes. Although beautiful themselves, the harmonies of the natural minor scale were not incisive enough for the dramatic kind of narrative favored by classical composers" (Hewitt 136). So came the Harmonic and Melodic Minor Scales!!!

The harmonic minor scale raises the seventh note of the minor scale by a semitone. In the case of A minor this would raise the seventh G to a G#. It looks like this:

The raised seventh creates a better harmony and gives the scale a more exotic sense than the original minor scale. I remember when I was learning this scale that whenever I played it or played a song with it I was reminded of Ancient Egypt. Here is a sample:

 This scale gave composers the power they were looking for in music. This is because  when the tonic and dominant chords (will be introduced later) of the natural minor, A minor and E minor, were changed to the chords A minor and E major, they create a much more convincing cadential progression (dominant to tonic).

Natural Minor Cadence (Right) and Harmonic Minor Cadence (Left)

As you can hear, the second cadence is much stronger than the first, which is a big reason why this scale is used. Songs created using this scale will have a different impact than both the Major and Natural Minor scales, so make sure you mess around with it to see if you can change your sound.

Finally, the third kind of minor scale is the melodic minor scale. This scale can be difficult to learn at first and, taken at face value, doesn't seem to be very worth the time and effort, but it is.

Composers weren't completely satisfied with the harmonic minor scale to solve all of their problems, as that exotic sound wasn't exactly fitting for every song. To solve this, they raise not only the seventh, but also the sixth, creating a smooth rise up to the top of the scale, and on the way down, to counteract this major feeling, the minor mode was reestablished by lower the two raised notes back to their natural minor places.

Here is what it sounds like up and down:

This scale has less practical use today than it used to and plays a much larger role in theory, but that doesn't mean it is useless. This ascending form of this scale has been used by countess jazz musicians-so much so that it has been given the name the 'jazz minor scale.' Some of its chords (in a later blog) are very beautiful, and is highly used in Hawaiian traditional music. This is an effective way to spice up any of your creations.

Now you know all of the basic minor scales, adding a great deal of wiggle room to your creations, and possibly explaining the sound of some things you have already heard, played, or made. Either way, the minor scales are a huge part of bringing music to life.

As always, thank you for reading this! Bye!

Question: Which minor scale do you like the most? How, if at all, do you plan to use minor scales, and how have you used them before?

Hewitt, Michael. Music Theory for Computer Musicians. Boston: Course Technology,      CENGAGE Learning, 2008. Print.