17. Constructing the four minors

We established earlier in our first discussion of minor that natural minor was one pattern, but that there were three others. Let us first revisit the natural minor pattern, then explore the other three. We’ll do this not by considering natural minor on its own, but in relation to its parallel major, to see the difference between them.

A major, for example, is built as A B C# D E F# G# A. A natural minor, on the other hand, is built as A B C D E F G A. Therefore, differences exist in exactly 3 degrees: degrees 3, 6, and 7. In all three cases, those degrees are exactly one half-step lower in minor as compared to major.

The minor third is non-negotiable. You must have a minor third, or you don’t have a minor scale, chord, or key. The other two differences, however, are flexible. This, therefore, creates four possibilities from the springboard of natural minor:

·        Change nothing

·       Raise only the sixth and keep the seventh where it is

·       Raise only the seventh and keep the sixth where it is

·       Raise both the sixth and the seventh.

Again, using A natural minor as an example, our first option is to transform it…. By not transforming it at all. Changing nothing in natural minor, of course, gets us back natural minor.

Let us then consider the triads this creates:

·       A minor (ACE)

·       B diminished (BDF)

·       C major (CEG)

·       D minor (DFA)

·       E minor (EGB)

·        F major (FAC)

·       G major (GBD)

Now, let’s move on to the second option—raising the sixth but not the seventh. First of all, the scale: A B C D E F# (this is the raised sixth) G A. Pay special attention to what this raised sixth is going to do to the chords that come out of this option, which we call the Dorian mode (more on the Greek modes soon).

·       A minor

·       B minor (note now that the F# means this chord is minor, and not diminished)

·       C major

·       D major (note that the F# means this chord is now major, and not minor)

·       E minor

·       F# diminished (note that the F# means this chord is now diminished and not major)

·       G major

We still have a mix of major, minor, and diminished in the Dorian mode, but for reasons that will soon be explained, we have a IV chord instead of a iv, which will prove to be very useful.

Next, let’s move to our third option: keeping the sixth lowered, but raising the seventh. First of all, the scale: A B C D E F G# A. Right away, something should jump out at you: for the first and only time, because we’re keeping the sixth but raising the seventh, we have an interval bigger than a whole step in a scale, which we force to remain a second by calling it an augmented second, even though one might certainly be tempted to use the enharmonic equivalent minor third relation which is certainly more intuitive for this distance than the augmented second—but doing so, of course, would break the rule that every unique letter name must appear in a diatonic scale once and only once. Keep paying attention, though, because the weirdness does not end there; in fact, the presence of the augmented second only causes more weirdness.

The triads now:

·        A minor

·       B diminished

·       C augmented

·       D minor

·       E major

·       F major

·       G-sharp diminished

This scale, in which we lose the IV we had in Dorian, but gain the all-important V as opposed to the Dorian and natural minor v—again, the importance of these chords will become very clear in a few articles—exists precisely to help resolve, pun intended, the harmonic problems I keep deliberately kicking down the road to deal with later. This scale, which I’ve always thought of as having a distinctly Middle-Eastern sound, is called “harmonic minor.” Further, harmonic minor is, because of its altered seventh, one of two minors which has an augmented chord. Augmented chords, by the way, are written with a superscript +, like III+.

Finally, we have the most complicated, but, I would say, likely most widely used, of the four options. Actually, this is a two-for-one deal, since the two directions of this scale are not the same, and therefore, this scale includes both possible raised and lowered sixths and both possible raised and lowered sevenths. Going up, this scale, called melodic minor, raises both the sixth and the seventh, such that its only difference from major is in the third degree (melodic minor’s, since it is minor, must be lowered; major’s, since it is major, must be raised). However, on its descent, melodic minor reverts both of those changes and is therefore identical to natural minor. I did not ever bother listing the descending forms of the other scales because they are, in a sense, “well-behaved”—both sides of the scale are identical, so that restatement would not have added anything.

Ascending, then, A melodic minor would be A B C D E F# G# A; and descending, A G F E D C B A.

Ascending, then, we have A minor, B minor, C augmented, D major, E major, F# diminished, and G# diminished. Descending, however, we have A minor, G major, F major, E minor, D minor, C major, B diminished, and A minor. One can, therefore, think of this scale as having nine unique notes and chords, as opposed to the seven and seven we’ve seen exclusively until now. Melodic minor, as its name suggests, exists to solve problems of melodic flexibility, which we will discuss in the very next article.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

35: Figured Bass

Image
  There’s a system of notating harmonies that’s rather unique to the Baroque era, but which is so frequently used there, and so important to it, that no discussion of theory would ever be complete if we did not cover it. This is the notation of figured bass: “figured,” in the sense of using figures (numbers) to notate the bass. Figured bass was, in a sense, its own notation completely separate from the five lines and four spaces of the staff, which was nearly exclusively the purview of cellists, bassists, harpsichords, and organists.  Figured bass, fair warning, can be intimidating at first. But, just as with anything else we’ve covered so far, the more you practice reading it, the better you’ll get.  In this system, we use numbers to indicate intervals above the bass. We stack them, and this is how we build chords. If you can’t stack them, nowadays, it’s perfectly fine to use slashes and write the numbers horizontally.  Let’s start with the easiest figured bass nota...
Read more

58: Swell pedals and swell shades

There’s one pedal that we haven’t discussed on the organ because it isn’t one of the “note” pedals—in fact, it’s the only one that doesn’t have a pitch. Instead, the missing pedal is the swell pedal. Look at the body of the organ (the assembly of where all the pipes are, as opposed to the “console”, where the organist sits and plays the instrument—these may or may not be physically close to each other), and you’ll probably see what kind of look like plantation shutters. (If you know where my parish is, then this feature of the organ is very clearly visible on ours. Your local organ might not be so obvious.) These shutters, called “swell shutters/shades,” show or hide the pipes of the organ. Organs have instantaneous dynamic control—the amount of pressure you put on a key dictates how much air flows through the pipes, just like a piano allows you to adjust dynamics on the fly by changing the amount of pressure with which the hammer hits the string(s) given the pressure on the key. Thes...
Read more

54: Trills in the Baroque vs. Classical Periods

Image
Baroque music is known for its incredibly technical and ornamented style. The most common and fundamental of those ornaments is our focus today: the trill. Most simply, a trill is a very fast, repeated alternation of two notes. In the vast majority of cases, those notes are adjacent, but that is not a requirement. Given how fast and common they are, regardless of what you play—whether it’s a string, wind, or keyboard instrument, or your voice—they have a reputation for being quite tiring to play. The period matters when considering a trill. Classical and later composers treat trills, in a sense, in the opposite manner than Baroque composers do. Let me show you two examples: First, the Baroque way of thinking. This is a PAC:   and especially in the Baroque era, when the plucked harpsichord dominated over the hammered piano, it was hard to sustain sounds for long since the sound of the plucking decays quickly. The trill was developed in response, out of a need both to ornam...
Read more