- Hi.
In this video, I'm going to
answer a specific question
that has been posed to
us by a number of people.
So, I'm Gareth from Music Matters,
and the question is this.
Why do we have three minor scales?
Well, most people have probably
heard of a harmonic scale
and a melodic minor scale.
But there's also this thing
called the natural minor scale.
And the natural minor
scale, in my experience,
causes more confusion than
the other two, actually.
So I'm going to talk about
the natural minor first.
Now, every minor scale has
a relative major scale.
And if you're not quite sure about that,
have a look at our Music Matters video
on the circle of fifths,
which explains exactly how
this whole system works.
But the idea is that
you have a major scale
and a minor scale that
are related to each other.
So, to give you an example,
C major has no sharps and no flats.
It's related to A minor.
And the reason it's
related to A minor is that,
in its key signature, A minor
also has no flats, no sharps.
So that's why we say that A minor
is the relative minor of C major.
And we can also say that C major
is the relative major of A minor.
In other words, they share
the same key signature.
And when we write a natural minor scale,
we are literally going to write
all the notes of the scale
and just use the key signature.
So if I'm going to use A-natural minor,
C major has no sharps, no
flats, so I'm just going to go
A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
A, G, F, E, D, C, B, A.
Okay?
what I'm going to write
to you on the board now
is the scale of E-natural minor,
and there's a reason why I've
chosen the key other than A.
So if I write E-natural minor,
I'm going to have one of
each letter name, E, F, G,
A, B, C, D, E.
But E minor is related on the
circle of fifths to G major.
Why are they related?
Because they both have a
key signature of F-sharp.
Now, some people think, when
you play E-natural minor,
you just start on E and
you use the white notes.
So you play,
E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E,
and come back down the same way,
but that is not E-natural minor.
That is a mode that begins on E.
So we're talking about natural
minor scales, not modes.
We're going to use F-sharp
in E-natural minor,
because F-sharp is in the key
signature for both G major
and its relative minor, E minor.
So when we play E-natural minor,
we play E, F-sharp,
G, A, B, C, D, E,
D, C, B, A, G, F-sharp, E.
And the reason I've gone up the scale
and come down the scale,
is just to emphasise
that it's the same whether
you're going up or coming down,
which is not true of the harmonic.
Well, not true of the
melodic minor scale, anyway.
So when you're writing
a natural minor scale,
you need to know the key signature.
You're going to start and finish on E
if it's E-natural minor,
and the only accidentals
you're going to use
are those that belong
to the key signature.
Okay, so I hope that
clears up the difference
between what's a natural
minor and what's a mode.
You can start on any note
and just go up an octave
in white notes and come
down in white notes,
and then you're playing in a mode.
So C to C,
is the Ionian mode.
D to D,
is the Dorian mode.
E to E is the Phrygian mode.
And so on, but this is
not the Phrygian mode.
This is the scale of E-natural minor.
So I hope that clarifies
the natural minor.
If you want to turn it into
a harmonic minor scale,
well, you're going to
use the key signature.
So there's the F-sharp still with us,
and in the harmonic minor scale,
you raise the seventh degree of the scale.
Okay, so that's this one here,
one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, it's D.
If I raise it by a
semitone, D becomes D-sharp.
You notice, I don't say sharpen it,
I say raise it by a
semitone, for this reason.
If it's a natural, and you
raise it by a semitone,
it becomes a sharp,
If it's a flat in the first instance,
and you raise it by a semitone,
it will become a natural.
So by using the term sharpen,
it implies that we're going
to stick sharps everywhere.
Well, if it starts as a flat
and you raise it by a semitone,
it becomes a natural,
if it starts as a sharp
and you raise it by a semitone,
it becomes a double-sharp,
so be careful about the
terminology you use.
I just talk about it that way.
Raise the seventh degree
of the scale by a semitone,
which is what we've done.
So that is the harmonic minor
scale, it's E harmonic minor.
It's the same going up
as it is coming down.
So E, F-sharp, G, A,
B, C, D-sharp, E,
D-sharp, C, B, A, G, F-sharp, E.
And if I want to write the melodic minor,
then what I do is I raise six and seven,
so, one, two, three, four, five, six.
C-natural raised a
semitone becomes C-sharp.
So that's how I would go up the scale.
It's probably a good
idea that I also show you
how to come back down the
scale, because in the case
of the melodic minor, we raise
the sixth and seventh degrees
going up, but we follow the
key signature coming down.
So when I come down,
I'm simply going to use the key signature.
So, when I'm going up,
I'm going E, F-sharp,
from the key signature, G, A, B,
raise the sixth, so
C-sharp, raise the seventh,
so D-sharp, E,
when I come down, I just
follow the key signature.
So, E, D-natural this
time, C-natural, B, A,
G, F-sharp from the key
signature, and E to finish.
So there we have it,
the three minor scales, the natural minor,
where we just adopt the key
signature, not to be confused
with the mode, then the harmonic
minor scale, where we raise
the seventh degree by a semitone
going up and coming down,
and the melodic minor
scale, where we, again,
use the key signature,
but we raise the sixth
and seventh degrees going
up, but simply follow
the key signature when we come down.
So you'll notice the
descending melodic minor scale
is the same as the natural minor scale.
So I hope that brings clarity to
the three different kinds of minor scales.
As to why we have these
three different minor scales,
well, that's a bigger
question, but essentially,
when we got into establishing
major and minor tonality,
in the years just following 1600,
we ended up having to sort of
go in more than one direction.
The major scale was quite easy to find,
that was easily located,
it's always the same.
When you come to the minors,
when you write harmony,
the harmonic minor works best.
When you write melody, the
melodic minor works best.
The reason being that at the top,
you get this funny interval
in the harmonic minor scale.
So that's a sort of slightly
odd sound, isn't it?
So it's better to use the
melodic minor at the top,
because it irons out that funny interval,
called the augmented second.
So when you're writing chords,
when you're writing harmony,
harmonic minor is great,
when you're writing melody,
the melodic minor is great.
Sometimes, of course, you've
got to sort of just do
a little bit of negotiating,
because there's conflict
of interest between writing a
melody in the melodic minor,
writing chords in the harmonic minor,
and sometimes you have to
compromise a little bit
to make sure you don't
get clashes of sound.
But there's also plenty
of music that's written
using the natural minor.
And increasingly, in instrumental exams,
people are being given a
choice of using the harmonic
or the melodic minor, or
using the natural minor.
So I hope that brings a little clarity
to this particular question,
why do we have three minor scales?
