Bass Scales: The Melodic Minor

So we’ve covered the minor scale, and then I explained how it evolved to create the harmonic minor because it creates better sounding chords for some situations. Next, we’re looking at the third evolution, the “melodic minor”- how it came to be and what it’s for.

The Melodic Minor

Here’s a recap of the harmonic minor on bass:


G -------------------5-7-9-
D -------------6-7-9-------
A -------5-7-8-------------
E -5-7-8-------------------

If you play this through, you might notice that it sounds a bit crazy. That’s because of the huge (3 fret) jump between the 6th and 7th notes. It just doesn’t sound right (or at least it didn’t to some people).

So what they did was to try and “smooth over” this gap by raising the 6th- which made the scale much easier to play melodically. Here is the new scale:


G -------------------5-7-9-
D -------------6-7-9-------
A -------5-7-9-------------
E -5-7-8-------------------

The note on the 8th fret of the A string has been moved to the 9th fret. A small change, but it turns the harmonic minor scale into the melodic minor scale. This new scale is very popular with Jazz players, and is definitely one of the cooler bass scales.

In terms of similar scales, you can either think of it as derived from the minor scale (as I have shown here), or (because it has been altered so much now) you could think of it as: the major scale with a flat third, or the Dorian mode with a major 7th.

Harmonising

If you harmonise this scale (from an A root note), you get these chords:

Amin – Bmin – Caug – D – E – F#dim – G#dim

…crazy, right? You could also extend these out to 7th chords, if you like. I’m going to leave you to figure that one out yourself (you’ve read up on chord construction, right?).

Please leave any questions below.
Rob.

June 29, 2011 at 7:00 pm | Bass Scales | No comments