How and where do i use..

[OmniAxiS]

please help... im curious as to when and where i use the harmonic minor and melodic minor scales for soloing in songs. byt the way, how were these scales created?

[StoneDragon]

First, take a look at this thread (http://www.zentao.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000017.html), where I posted a rather long explanation of how chords are put together. This will give you an idea of why the harmonic minor scale was created.

The melodic minor is an offshoot of the harmonic minor. Changing the natural minor scale (1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7) into the harmonic minor (1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7 did wonderful things for chords (that's why it's called harmonic minor), but the combination of the flattened 6th degree and the natural 7th degree was considered ugly and unusable.

It basically came down to the fact that the church controlled everything, so the best paying gig (often times the only gig) in town was writing music for the church. The church was not interested in instrumental music, so most of the music at the time was written for vocals. The minor 3rd jump from the b6 to the 7 is a difficult thing to sing correctly, so composers were stuck using the major keys only or coming up with a way to smooth over that rough spot in the harmonic minor scale.

The melodic minor scale (1 2 b3 4 5 6 7) was their answer.

Originally, the melodic minor came in two flavors, ascending and descending. The ascending version took advantage of the new interval structure (1 2 b3 4 5 6 7) while the descending version followed the interval structure of the natural minor (1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7). All this means to you and me is that it was considered correct if a descending minor melody followed the interval structure of the natural minor and an ascending minor melody followed the new interval structure.

You can verify this sound for yourself by trying it. Play a short melody that descends following the natural minor scale, and then resolve that melody upward following the melodic intervals to the root. It will sound very Baroque.

Today, the melodic minor in both descending and ascending form is not used often. It sounds very dated. Instead, you will find the "jazz" melodic minor used. The jazz melodic minor is simply the intervals of the original ascending form used for both ascending and descending.

You won't really find entire songs written around these scales. Instead you will find instances in rock, jazz and folk songs where chords may be borrowed from the harmonic minor scale or instances in jazz songs where the melodic minor and its modes are used to add tension to certain types of chords.

It would take me quite a bit of typing to go through all of the theory behind various examples of using these scales. I plan to incorporate this information in future theory lessons though. Hopefully this will give you enough to get you started.

[OmniAxiS]

yeah that helped alot stone, thanx http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

[CyberCobre]

You got to watch that SD guy. Ask a question and get a book for an answer! ...Come to think of it, I tend to do that to...sometimes (but never as much as SD).

http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/tongue.gif raspberries to you, Grumble from your naughty other half.