Guitar Scales: Harmonic Minor

In last week’s “Guitar Scales” post, we found out that the “Minor Scale” doesn’t really exist, and that it’s really a type of “key” made up of three scales. If you remember back to our study of the Major Scale, you’ll realise that in order to create a “key” we need chords for that key- and those chords are taken from the notes of the scale.

Harmonising the Minor Scale

What we need to do then, is to create chords from our Natural Minor scale. These will be the chords that we use when we want to write a song (or chord progression, or solo…) in a minor key.

There is a problem, however.

Here is the natural minor scale in A:

A B C D E F G

…and here is the major scale, in C:

C D E F G A B

Do you see what’s going to happen? If we create chords from the A natural minor scale they are going to be exactly the same chords as we would get from the C major scale (the two scales have the same notes)! So our chord progression might be in A minor, but it’s going to be difficult to tell the difference from that, and one in C major (because they use the same chords)!

The Harmonic Minor Scale

What people realised is: if you change the 5th chord in the natural minor scale to a major chord, it strengthens the resolution to the tonic (root note) of that scale. In other words: if you change the 5th chord in our A natural minor scale (Em) to a major chord (Emaj) it reinforces it’s “A minorness”.

So, we take the natural minor scale:

A B C D E F G

…create our chords from it (hopefully you’ll remember how we did this before), which gives us:

Am (A C E), Bdim (B C D), Cmaj (C E G), Dm (D F A), Em (E G B), Fmaj (F A C), Gmaj (G B D)

…the we make the 5th chord (Em) into a major chord (E major). We do this by sharpening the minor third in the chord (i.e. raising it by one fret/half a step/a semitone). So, in this example: E G A becomes E G# A.

Make sense so far? We’ve now got exactly the same scale, but it has a G sharp instead of a G.

A B C D E F G#

This is the “A Harmonic Minor Scale”. Here is how to play it:


e -------------------------------------------------7--8--10--
B ---------------------------------------6--9--10------------
G -----------------------------5--7--9-----------------------
D --------------------6--7--9--------------------------------
A -----------5--7--8-----------------------------------------
E --5--7--8--------------------------------------------------


Using the Harmonic Minor scale

This scale is very “classical” sounding, and is used by a certain Yngwie Malmsteen all the time! It’s good points include:

• It can be used harmonically (i.e. using the V7 chord in a minor key), or melodically (just like Yngwie..)
• It can have a very “neoclassical rock/metal” sound
• It can be used to create eastern/Arabian sound (esp. the 5th mode…)
• There is an augmented 2nd (three frets) gap between the 6th and 7th notes- which creates some interesting sounds

So there you go. The harmonic minor scale is just the natural minor scale with a sharpened 7th note, and it’s called the “harmonic minor” because they originally sharpened the 7th note to get a major chord (chords = harmony).

There’s one more minor scale to go, so if you want to stay updated, don’t forget to subscribe!
Rob.

February 22, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Scales, How to | 1 comment

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