A quick Google search will reveal many fingerings. The only way to make it easier is to not use all six strings. All of the fingerings require pinkie stretches and/or position shifts. Unfortunately, melodic minor is extremely annoying to play on guitar. In C melodic minor, the tritones are between F and B, and between E-flat and A. Melodic minor has two tritones, between its fourth and seventh notes, and also between its third and sixth. Major scale contains one tritone, between its fourth and seventh notes. Melodic minor also has more internal dissonance than the major scale and its modes. C D Eb F G - sounds minor G A B C - sounds major There’s a constant conflict between the bottom half of the scale and the top. The weirdness of melodic minor comes from the way it lives simultaneously in the minor and major key worlds. You can hear this chord in the first four bars of “Chelsea Bridge” by Billy Strayhorn: The tonic chord in C is Cm(maj7), sometimes called the major-minor chord: C Eb G B However, the chords and scales you get from it are exceptionally dark and peculiar. It’s just the major scale with a flat third. Melodic minor looks innocent enough on paper. The scale has the same symmetry if you write it on the circle of fifths too. Note that the scale is symmetrical along a line drawn through D-flat and G. It’s called the melodic minor scale, and if you want to push your playing or writing in a more adventurous, exotic and challenging direction, it’s a good one to have in your musical toolbox. For musical Jedi masters, there’s one more valuable minor scale. There’s also the blues scale, which sounds good in any key, major or minor. It’s also worth noting that you can also play this scale over the other Cm7 chords prior in the form to access some more interesting and exotic note choices.My last post on minor keys covered the three scales you need for most situations in rock, pop, and film scores: natural minor, harmonic minor, and Dorian mode. We can play C melodic minor, which has a cool mysterious tone that is a great choice to end the tune. This opens up further melodic possibilities. This is the same as the minor 7th chords except the 7th has been raised up a half step to the major 7th. A Choice Of Scales For The i Minor Chordįor the final Cm7, we have the option of instead playing a C minor major 7th chord. Both of these scales contain altered tensions which are well suited to playing over the V7alt chord in minor 251 progressions. Instead, we’re going to use the G altered mode, and the G diminished half whole scale. The G mixolydian mode may not be the most suitable because it is derived from Major Scale Harmony. The G7 chord is going to resolve to a C minor chord and so this gives us the opportunity to introduce an altered mode or scale contiaining altered tensions. We can extend the melodic possibilities by choosing modal scales for D-7b5 and superimposing these over the Ab7. In the last four bars of the form, we can think of the Ab7 chord as a tritone substitution of Dm7b5, which would precede the G7 going to Cm7 to create a complete minor 251. Each Dorian mode contains the same notes as the major scale built a whole step below the root of the Dorian mode.Ĭ Dorian is based off the Bb major scale and contains the exact same notes, just played from C to C,į Dorian is based off the Eb major scale, containing the exact same notes, but played from F to F Last 4 Bars: Minor II-V-I Progression In Disguise The scale degree formula is R-2-b3-4-5-6-b7 but you can also related the mode to the parent scale. We start by playing the first 8 bars of the form with the Dorian modes of Cm7 and Fm7. If you are not familiar with modal scales, check out the course on Scales & Modes For Improv What Scales Will We Be Using?Ī variety of modal scales can be played over the chords of the minor blues progression. In this lesson, we’re going to introduce some more interesting and exotic sounding scales we can use over the form.
We also explored how to start improvising over a minor blues progression with the minor blues scale. In the last lesson, we started out improvisation study by pentatonic scale soloing. Welcome to lesson 4 of the minor blues course.