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Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Melodic Minor Scale

Next up in the exciting tour of guitar scales is the Melodic Minor Scale.

It's spelt with the intervals: 1,2,b3,4,5,6,7, so depending on how you want to look at it, it's the same as the Major Scales but with a b3, or if you prefer the same as the Natural Minor Scale but with a (major) 6 and 7.

I do vaguely remember there being some mention of the melodic minor scale strictly speaking being different in it's ascending and descending forms (Natural minor  when descending I think?)* but in it's application particularly by lazy guitarists, these boxes below will do just fine.

Melodic Minor does have some lovely modes, that I will waffle about later, including my favourite scale, The Hindu Scale, made famous by Jimmy Page, but the Hindu Scale sheet will follow... eventually.

(*That sounded a bit mental when I read it back, so I checked. In classical composition the scale does have different ascending and descending forms, 1,2,b3,4,5,6,7 going up, 1,2,b3,4,5,b6,b7 going down, but in modern applications applications, in particular jazz, the descending version is omitted. If you don't believe me ask wikipedia!)



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