8. MINOR SCALES- IDENTIFICATION AND TYPES

 8.      MINOR SCALES- IDENTIFICATION AND TYPES:

Minor scales sound different than major scales. This is partly because the third note of the minor scale is a minor interval, whereas the third note of the major scale is a major interval. That little half-step between a minor third and a major third makes all the difference.

Three Different Types of Minor Scales

Three types of minor scales are: natural, harmonic, and melodic.

Natural Minor Scale (Simply Minor Scale)

The easiest minor scale to construct is the natural minor scale. We can think of the natural minor in terms of its corresponding major scale. Every natural minor scale also uses the same intervals. C Major Scale has the notes C D E F G A B C. Moving up to the sixth note or just moving down two notes and constructing the Scale we get A B C D E F G A which is the A minor (natural) scale. 

Structure of a Minor Scale (A minor)

The sequence of intervals between the notes of a minor scale is:

• whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole 
  

Where "whole" stands for a whole tone (a red u-shaped curve in the figure), and "half" stands for a semitone (a red broken line in the figure). A minor scale may be seen as two identical tetrachords with a whole tone at the end. Each tetrachord consists of two whole tones separated by a semitone:

• whole, half, whole

The Simple formula for identifying the Minor Scale for a Note can be by moving “One tone, One Semitone, Two tones, One Semitone, Two tones” from the Note itself by arranging in the ascending order.

Steps to Follow

1. Write the 12 notes starting with the note for which you want to identify the notes of that particular note’s minor scale, (For instance, Here it had been chosen to find notes of D minor scale)        

D      D#/Eb       E          F        F#/Gb       G      G#/A      A       A#/Bb     B       C          C#/Db           D

2. Apply the Simple Formula

3. Write down the Notes that are marked, this would be notes of the minor Scale that is chosen

D         E            F         G         A          A#/Bb       C         D

4. Likewise, continue to find the notes in any of the 12 minor scales

Harmonic Minor

The harmonic minor scale is similar to the natural minor scale, except the seventh note is raised a half step. Some musicians prefer this type of minor scale because the seventh note better leads up to the tonic of the scale. The intervals in a harmonic minor scale go like this: whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole and half, half.

Melodic Minor

The interval between the sixth and seventh notes are three half steps in the Harmonic Minor Scale and we seldom have an interval on a scale wider than two half steps in the Western Scales.  So the melodic minor scale raises both the sixth and seventh notes of the natural minor scale by a half step each, resulting in whole or half note interval. The intervals in the melodic minor scale go like this: whole, half, whole, whole, whole, whole, half.

As if three minor scales weren’t enough to deal with, some music theorists use this melodic minor scale only when going “up” the scale (ascending melodic minor scale) and only when going back down the scale(the descending melodic minor scale), and otherwise use the notes in the natural minor scale. So the sixth and the seventh degrees are raised on the way up, but not on the way down or vice versa. So, the combinations are always possible.