Minor Scales

 

Most people who play classical or popular music are aware of two types of scales: major and minor. Before continuing, I'd like to point out that, once again, the terms major and minor lead to a lot of misconceptions. Major scales are not more "important" than minor scales. These terms refer to something else, specifically, interval size. These scales were originally called Ionian and Aeolian, respectively, as they came down to us from the ancient Greeks. There are actually several other scales, which people now call "modes," and they are used with some frequency in various types of music. More on that in a future post.

The major and minor scales sound different from each other because of the interval relationships between their scale tones. A student once said to me, "Oh, A minor is just like C major but it starts on a different note." This is a complete misunderstanding of what the scale is all about, and by extension, what our music is all about. Music based on minor scales sounds very different than music based on major scales. They don't sound the same except "starting on a different note!"

There is a LOT of confusion about minor scales and I find that confusion is still being propagated today, even though the correct information is available if you really look. I hope to clear up that confusion for you here.

You will probably have heard there are three types of minor scales: natural or "true" minor, harmonic minor, and melodic minor. Why would we need three minors? What is their purpose? Teachers and music books tell you the "rules" for each and teachers have you practice each kind, but they almost never explain why.

There is really only one minor scale, the true or natural minor. This is what is reflected in the key signature. So, for the example of A minor, there are no sharps or flats and that is what you see in the key signature. No exceptions, ever.

Then along comes the so-called "harmonic" minor, where the 7th degree of scale is raised a half step, giving us G# in our A minor example. The reason the 7th degree is raised is because of harmonic reasons (thus the name of the "scale"). In A minor, the V (five) chord would be E minor. Chords which fall naturally in the scale would be refered to a diatonic chords. If you listen to music written before the mid 1600s (Renaissance music, for example) you would notice that if a piece or song uses the V chord, it is likely to be the E minor, or the diatonic chord. In the 1600s, people began to prefer the sound of a major V chord resolving to the I (one) chord. The resolution of G# to A -- a half step -- feels stronger and more final than the resolution of G natural to A -- a whole step. Let's say your final two chords of the piece were V to I, and the third, or middle note, of the V chord was on top (in the melody); you'd have a much stronger feeling of finality going G# to A than G to A. Remember, this really was just a matter of taste. Prior to this, Renaissance listeners were perfectly happy with their gentler resolution of the G to the A. 

So the diatonic E minor chord has been replaced with the non-diatonic E major chord. It could happen everywhere in the piece, or just in some places. Is the G sharp in the key signature? No, never. Although just about everyone will tell you the harmonic minor is a separate scale, I believe that is a backwards way of looking at it. The scale is the scale. This is just the substitution of a non-diatonic chord for a diatonic one, for expressive purposes.

Now here is where people get REALLY confused. They learn there is a so-called "melodic" minor. This involves raising the 6th and 7th degree of the scale a half step. In our A minor example, that would mean we'd have F# and G#. Why? If you play the harmonic minor, and you hear the interval of a third from the F natural to the G#, you might think it sounds a bit exotic, maybe Middle Eastern. Composers at the time (and even now) would probably not want a melody containing that sound, at least in many cases. The solution? Raise the 6th degree too and you get a smooth run up with all intervals of a second, no thirds. So if you have a passage where the chords being used are the I and the major V, your melody isn't going to be in natural minor, because the G naturals would clash with the G#s in the chords, and you're avoiding that exotic-sounding third in the harmonic minor, so you'll end up with the melody using the raised 6th and 7th, the so-called melodic minor. Once again, the reason for it is in the name: it's to make the melody more pleasing and not clash with the harmony.

You might notice that what you now have is the first half of the scale being true minor and second half being identical to major. A hybrid, if you will.

So for the past few hundred years, piano teachers have been assigning students the practice of all three types of minor. Every book of scales will include all three. I don't believe students should be spending so much time on scales in the first place. But when you play them, do them 100% from your own understanding of them, not reading them from books. I've met people who've spend hundreds of hours playing these scales but can't answer the basic question of why they exist. 

It is a complete waste of time to practice all these separate scales. If you can play an A minor scale and an A major scale, you can play the so-called melodic minor, which, as we've seen, is kind of a combination of both. It's a colossal waste of time to practice them all.

Would the melodic minor be used only in an ascending melody but not in a descending? Of course not. If the melody is going to avoid clashing with the chords and also avoid the exotic-sounding third, then it would happen in either direction. Yet for some strange reason, there evolved a convention of practicing the melodic minor, with the raised 6th and 7th, on the way up, but then for some reason coming down the scale in the natural minor. It's completely arbitrary, and is another example of the stodgy and pedantic nature of a lot of what is taught for piano technique and theory. It really irks me that we are still using these 300-year-old ideas.