So by now, you’re probably familiar with how to create minor scales. If not, type “minor scale” in our search box and you’ll get tons of lessons.
When I say “minor scale,” I’m usually talking about the natural minor scale (the most common). Sometimes, the “natural” part makes all the difference when you’re differentiating between other types of minor scales like the “harmonic” and “melodic.” When you leave off the “natural” part, most people will know you’re talking about the regular minor scale though.
But back to the “other” minor scales because that’s exactly what I want to talk about today… the harmonic minor scale.
The good news is that it is drop dead simple to play harmonic minor scales if you already know your natural minor scales.
But before I go there, let me talk about this first…
If you’ve read this post, then you’ll be familiar with the chords that correspond to the natural minor scale:
1st tone – minor 7
2nd tone – half-diminished 7
3rd tone – major 7
4th tone – minor 7
5th tone – minor 7
6th tone – major 7
7th tone – dominant 7
What I want you to pay attention to is the 5th tone and its chord. Notice it’s minor.
This created a problem for western composers because the fifth tone was almost always major. It provided that strong pull needed to get back to the tonic, or first tone. But now that it was minor, it made music sound ancient and folkloric, at least to westerners.
For example, a common 1-4-5 progression would have all minor chords if you only played chords from the list above. You try playing C minor to F minor to G minor and tell me how it sounds to you… kinda ancient and gloomy.
Let’s go to the key of C minor to make this even clearer.
The natural minor scale is:
C D Eb F G Ab Bb C
Notice the 7th tone, which is Bb. This is the tone that forces the fifth degree to be minor.
Why?
Well, because the fifth tone is G and if you create a chord off G by taking every other note, you’d get G+Bb+D, which is a G minor chord.
Contrast it with the regular C major scale (C D E F G A B C) and the 5th chord is G+B+D, which is a G major chord… the chord we’re used to hearing.
So that’s one reason the harmonic minor scale was created.
And for the good news…
All it does is take the natural minor scale and raise the 7th tone a half step. In the key of C minor, it basically gets that “B” natural back so that the fifth chord can be major instead of minor.
C natural minor scale:
C D Eb F G Ab Bb C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Now, to transform this into a C harmonic minor scale, just take the 7th tone (Bb) and raise it a half step to B.
C harmonic minor scale:
C D Eb F G Ab B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Note: The skip from “Ab” to “B” in this scale creates an interesting sound. I’ll tell you how they fixed that later… (cough cough – “melodic” minor scale).
Recap:
So now you know how to transform any natural minor scale into a harmonic minor scale and the history behind why it was created.
Until next time!
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