Lesson-32 :Harmonic Minor Scale - Part-1 - Establishing the Pattern !

From Mood to Maths...!

As usual its time to analyse and understand the Minor Scale deeper. !

Now, having gone through the course of “Major Scales” analysis, its easy for me to repeat those analysis for the Minor scales also, in the similar manner.

If you remember, in case of Major scales, we went through the following steps:

a) Establishing the Pattern of adjacent notes (in terms of Tone and Semi tones)
b) Scrutinising the intervals with reference to Tonic and other notes
c) Various Major scales in terms of Sharps
d) Various Major Scales in terms of Flats

The same lessons we have to repeat for Minor Scales also.

Before further proceeding, I want you to recall, that while formulating the Minor Scale from the established Major Scale, we effected two changes viz.

1) Reduction of Third Note of the scale by a Semi tone
2) Reduction of Sixth note of the scale by a Semi tone

Keeping this in mind, we can easily recognize the change of pattern from the standard Major scale.

Due to the 3rd note reduction the first half pattern of Major scale

(Whole + Whole + Semi )

now changes to

(Whole + Semi + Whole)

Due to the 6th note reduction, Second half pattern of Major scale

(Whole + Whole + Semi)

now changes to

(Semi + Whole & Half + Semi)

I hope there is no confusion about that ! You can visually check it with the keyboard in case of doubts !

So the minor scale which we established in the last discussion will have the following pattern :

( Whole + Semi + Whole ) + Whole + ( Semi + One&Half + Semi)

As a cross check, if you count the total of a scale we shall get Six tones ( 12 keys x Semi = 6 ) a fact we established in our earlier understanding

So this is the pattern of Minor scale. This minor scale is called “Harmonic Minor"

( At this junction I would like to confirm your likely query that ……is there any other minor scale ? …

Yes.. one other variation of minor scale called “Melodic Minor” scale is there.

We will discuss about that much much later…..!

Hereafter, when we say minor scale it means Harmonic Minor with the above pattern…. Unless it is specifically told about the Melodic Minor…)

So we have established the Pattern of Harmonic Minor scale…!

It is needless to say that, if we could follow this pattern from any key, the scale must be Harmonic Minor….!

So first part of our analysis is over…simple and fast…..!