Melodies in minor keys often use this particular pattern of accidentals, so instrumentalists find it useful to practice melodic minor scales. (Please see Beginning Harmonic Analysis for more about this.) In the melodic minor scale, the sixth and seventh notes of the scale are each raised by one half step when going up the scale, but return to the natural minor when going down the scale. Harmonies in minor keys often use this raised seventh tone in order to make the music feel more strongly centered on the tonic. The harmonic minor scale raises the seventh note of the scale by one half step, whether you are going up or down the scale. There are two other kinds of minor scales that are commonly used, both of which include notes that are not in the key signature. They contain only the notes in the minor key signature. To hear some simple examples in both major and minor keys, see Major Keys and Scales.Дo key signatures make music more complicated than it needs to be? Is there an easier way? Join the discussion at Opening Measures.ДЄll of the scales above are natural minor scales. Music that is in a minor key is sometimes described as sounding more solemn, sad, mysterious, or ominous than music that is in a major key. So you can't, for example, transpose a piece from C major to D minor (or even to C minor) without changing it a great deal. Music in minor keys has a different sound and emotional feel, and develops differently harmonically. But music that is in D minor will have a different quality, because the notes in the minor scale follow a different pattern and so have different relationships with each other. When ascending, raise BOTH the 6th and 7th Degrees When descending, go back down to the normal notes of the natural minor scale. (See Beginning Harmonic Analysis for more on this.) So music that is in, for example, C major, will not sound significantly different from music that is in, say, D major. In each major scale, however, the notes are arranged in the same major scale pattern and build the same types of chords that have the same relationships with each other. F# Dorian: F# G# A B C# D# E F#.Each major key uses a different set of notes (its major scale). As long as the correct sequence of intervals is preserved, you may choose any note as the first degree of any scale you like. Notice the different and exotic characters imparted to the various modes by cyclically permuting the diatonic interval sequence. Now start on D and play only white keys up to the next D. You have just played a C major scale, or equivalently, a C Ionian scale.

There is a simple way to familiarize yourself with these modes: on a piano keyboard, start on the note C and ascend on only white keys, one at a time, until you reach the C an octave above your starting point. Their names are Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian: seven permutations, seven diatonic modes.

Each such permutation is spoken of by musicians as a mode. While the major and minor scales are the most important ones occurring in tonal music, they are but two manifestations of the entire diatonic system, just two of seven possible cyclic permutations of our interval sequence. These two commonly-encountered variants and their usage will be discussed more in depth when your present author or another contributor has time for the discussion for now, let it suffice to note that the harmonic minor scale differs from the natural minor one only in that its seventh degree is raised by a half step to form a leading tone, while the melodic minor scale is equivalent to a natural minor scale with its sixth and seventh degrees each raised a half step while the scale ascends but on the way down, the melodic minor scale is identical to the natural minor.Д¬ Harmonic Minor Scale on the Treble Clef

There are also two other types of minor scales that deviate from the diatonic interval sequence: the harmonic and melodic minor scales. Note that a 'shorthand' version of this process could consist in starting from the sixth note of the major scale and working our way up cyclically: using the example of the D major scale given above, we can see that the B minor scale is B C# D E F# G A B. We obtain the 'default' minor scale, called the natural minor scale, by choosing a note as our tonic and proceeding by the cyclic permutation W-H-W-W-H-W-W of our interval sequence.

Melodic minor scales treble clef