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Hi, how are you doing? Justin here, filling in for the
theory godfather today.
and in this lesson I want to discuss
minor scales.
There's been a lot of confusion on the forums
and I've seen lots of comments of different videos that I've done
with people getting a bit confused about the different types of minor scale.
The major scale is pretty obvious. There's the major scale and that's it.
When we start talking about minor scales, we discover that there's the Natual minor scale, the Pure minor scale, the Aeolian mode...
...the Harmonic minor, Melodic minor, the Phrygian mode, the Dorian mode...
So how come there's al these different minor scales? Where do they come from and when do you use them?
That's what this video is about.
I'm gonna tell you a little story and it's not really the truth, but I'm hoping that it will help you understand
the makeup of these different minor scales and when you might use them.
The first thing that you need to understand is the pure minor scale, which is the same as the natural minor scale and the Aeolian mode.
This is the first minor scale that was used way back in ... time
And it sounds like this. I'm gonna do one of these examples in the key of A.
I'm gonna play an A minor chord and then I'm gonna play the A pure minor scale, which is the same as C major scale.
It has the same notes as C major. So here's the chord...
...and here's the scale...
That's the first type of minor scale that existed and that's the one that was used for a long time.
Before we get on to the next stage, you need to understand another thing called a 'cadence',
or more specifically a 'perfect cadence'. A perfect cadence is a V chord going to the I chord in any given key.
In a major key, if we translate this back to A major, it would be the chord E7 going to A.
In most classical music this was how a song finished, or a section finished.
And you can hear when I play it in a sec. it really sounds like it's resolved, it finishes.
So here we go, E7 to an A.
You hear it all the time.
Really common, it's this sound...
You can hear it sound kind of final, finished.
A perfect cadence.
The reason that that works is, particularly this note G#, which is part of the E7 chord going...
G# is called the leading note. And that's a really important part to understand.
I already mentioned that the A minor scale has the same notes as the C major scale.
If we look at the chords in the key of C, but we start on the chord A, we end up with this diatonic sequence, which would be A minor...
B half-diminished... C ... D minor ... E minor (and this is important!), the fifth chord.
F major... G major... and back to A minor.
That's the diatonic sequence in A Pure minor. A natural minor, pure minor, aeolian mode, there all the same thing.
They all have the same notes as the C major scale. They're called relative major and relative minor.
The relative major of A minor is C major, and the relative minor of C major is A minor.
You might want to check out the web site page for this. All of the stuff I'm talking about is typed up already,
the page is called 'Demystify the minors', it would be a really good idea to take a look at that page.
This video is embedded in that page on the website, so you can scroll down and see all the notes.
You'll probably find that helpful to be able to see these things, the construction of each of these chords.
The idea of this video is to give you the aural content, to make sure your ears understand what I'm talking about.
So that's a cadence.
The fifth chord in that diatonic sequence of A pure minor was E minor.
If we go E minor to A minor, it doesn't really sound finished. It could keep going somewhere.
It could go all sorts of different places, it doesn't have any sort of finality.
What happened back in the day (it's not exactly true but bear with me), that Bach really wanted to get his perfect cadence.
He wanted the sound of E7 going to A minor.
So he could finish his song.
What he decided to do, was to change the note G, which is the note that makes the E minor, and change it to a G sharp.
Which meant that that chord, the fifth chord in the key of A minor, could be E7.
So he could have the E7 going to A minor.
That new scale is called the A Harmonic minor, because it gave him the harmony he required to make the music he wanted to play.
This scale sounds like this. This is the A harmonic minor scale. Here's the chord...
...Here's the scale...
All well and good! He's got his E7, he's changed the scale, and now he had the harmonies going that he wanted to use.
Everything is happy. Almost...