Stop 5 of 6
Harmonic and melodic minor
The leading note in minor and its consequences.
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Stop 5 of 6
The leading note in minor and its consequences.
Aeolian is a beautiful island, but it has a broken pier: its dominant chord does not push you home. For centuries musicians fixed it by raising one or two notes, and those fixes gave birth to two scales with a life of their own: and . In this stop you find out where they come from, how they sound, and why one sounds like classical music and neoclassical metal while the other sounds like modern jazz.
Two almost identical progressions. Only the third chord changes. Listen to how each one reaches the final Am.
The first gets home without hurry, almost by accident. In the second, E7 creates a tension that demands a return to Am. The difference is a single note: the G in Em versus the G♯ in E7.
In A natural minor the seventh degree is G, a whole step below the tonic. Harmonise the scale and the chord on the fifth degree is Em: minor, with no leading tone. The magnet is missing.
Listen to the two approaches to the tonic. With G the arrival is calm; with G♯ the half step pulls the melody into A like a spring.
Raise G to G♯ and you get harmonic minor: 1 2 ♭3 4 5 ♭6 7.
Look at the gap between F (♭6) and G♯ (7): three half steps. It is spelled as a second (F–G) but sounds like a minor third: an , and it is responsible for the scale's “exotic” flavour. No major scale or diatonic mode has a leap like that between neighbouring degrees.
That leap is the one we associate with Middle Eastern music, Eastern European dances and neoclassical metal, where guitarists such as Yngwie Malmsteen popularised it in the 1980s with blistering harmonic-minor sequences.
Harmonise harmonic minor in triads and new chords appear:
| Degree | i | ii° | ♭III+ | iv | V | ♭VI | vii° |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In A | Am | Bdim | Caug | Dm | E | F | G♯dim |
The two that matter are V (with a seventh, E7) and vii° (with a seventh, G♯dim7, a diminished seventh chord). Both contain G♯ and both resolve to Am.
In practice, hardly anyone plays a whole piece in harmonic minor. The usual approach is natural minor for almost everything and harmonic minor only over the V7, where the chord's G♯ asks for it. That way the melody's natural G never clashes with the chord's G♯.
Play the notes of A harmonic minor starting on E and you get a mode with ♭2 and a major third: 1 ♭2 3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7. It is , the sound of the flamenco cadence you heard in the previous stop. Over E7, the F works as a flat nine (♭9): that is why the full chord is often written E7♭9.
For a singer rising towards the tonic, the F–G♯ gap was awkward. The fix was to raise the sixth degree too: 1 2 ♭3 4 5 6 7, melodic minor. Now the scale climbs without odd leaps: it is like a major scale with a minor third.
In the classical tradition, melodic minor is used only going up. Coming down there is no need for a leading tone (the melody is moving away from the tonic, not towards it), so it reverts to natural minor:
In jazz it is used the same way up and down and is often called “jazz minor”. Its tonic chord is a minor chord with a major seventh (Am(maj7)) or a minor sixth chord (Am6), a sophisticated, film-noir sound.
Just as the major scale has seven modes, so does melodic minor. Two of them are essential in jazz: the fourth, Lydian dominant (1 2 3 ♯4 5 6 ♭7), for seventh chords with ♯11; and the seventh, the altered scale, for dominants with every tension altered. You will meet them in the next stage, The Harmony Observatory. For now it is enough to know where they come from.
All three scales share the first five degrees. Only 6 and 7 change:
| Scale | 6 | 7 | Leading tone | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural minor | ♭6 (F) | ♭7 (G) | no | rock, pop, modal Aeolian |
| Harmonic minor | ♭6 (F) | 7 (G♯) | yes | over V7; classical, metal, flamenco |
| Melodic minor | 6 (F♯) | 7 (G♯) | yes | rising lines (classical); jazz |
String 6, Fret 5: A2 · 1 · Root
String 6, Fret 5: A2 · 1 · Root
Compare the formulas and you will see that melodic minor is one note away from two scales you already know. Against the major scale, only the third changes (♭3). Against Dorian, only the seventh changes (7 instead of ♭7). That is why, over a static minor chord, moving from Dorian to melodic minor is a subtle but very expressive change: G becomes G♯ and the tonic chord moves from Am7 to Am(maj7).
| Scale from A | 3 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major (Ionian) | 3 | 6 | 7 |
| Melodic minor | ♭3 | 6 | 7 |
| Dorian | ♭3 | 6 | ♭7 |
| Natural minor (Aeolian) | ♭3 | ♭6 | ♭7 |
| Harmonic minor | ♭3 | ♭6 | 7 |
Read from top to bottom, the table is another brightness ladder: each row changes one note of the one above (except the last, which raises the 7 again). Keeping it in your head lets you move between these scales the way you move between modes: one note at a time.
Goal: Improvise 16 bars over Am–Dm–E7–Am playing natural G in the Am and Dm bars and G sharp in every E7 bar, resolving to A or C when Am arrives.
Start on A (string 6, fret 5). Go up with F♯ and G♯; come down with G and F. Sing the names of the notes that change.
Goal: Play classical melodic minor (melodic up, natural down) over two octaves from A at the 5th fret of the sixth string, at 80 BPM in eighth notes, without mixing up F and G on the way down.
Over the drone, melodic minor sounds dark and elegant at once. Play with the A–C–E–G♯ arpeggio and let the sixth (F♯) appear on long notes.
Goal: Improvise for two minutes over the A drone with melodic minor, ending each phrase on G sharp or F sharp without it sounding like a mistake.
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