Music Video Lesson: What are Minor Scales?

So if you had a piece with no sharps or flats in the key signature, it may be in C major. But suppose it was in a minor key. What key would that be and how would you know it's in a minor key if it has the same key signature? This is LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin with a question, what are minor scales? You ever wonder, you have a piece of music, you wonder, is it in the major, is it in the minor? How do you even know? You're going to learn that today. I have another video on key signatures and also on what are major scales, which would be very helpful for you in preparation for this video if you don't already have a solid grasp of that. Well, we discussed key signatures and we discussed major scales. Major scales are a series of whole steps and half steps with all whole steps except between the third and fourth and seventh and eighth notes. So on the piano, visually oriented, the C major is very obvious. You have half steps between the third and fourth and seventh and eighth notes because there's no black keys there. So I'm going to use C major as an example. So if you had a piece with no sharps or flats in the key signature, it may be in C major. But suppose it was in a minor key. What key would that be and how would you know it's in a minor key if it has the same key signature? This is the key, literally. The sixth note of the major scale is the tonic or the root of the minor scale. So you take that C major scale and count up to the sixth note. One, two, three, four, five, six.

Now you play the notes of the C major scale but starting on A, starting on the sixth note, playing all the notes of the C major scale and you end up with this, the A natural minor scale. So when you see a piece of music without any sharps or flats, it may be in C major but it may be in A minor. How do you know? Well, the minor is rarely found in its natural or pure form as I just demonstrated. I think you should go really far back before major minor tonality was really entrenched in Western music starting around in the Baroque era in the 1700s. Before that, modal music was very, very popular in Renaissance music and such. And so post modal music, there are two forms of the minor that are prevalent, the harmonic minor and the melodic minor.

And this is how it works.

The piece might be written with no sharps or flats but accidentals are written in the score whenever they occur. The harmonic minor has a raised seventh.

The seventh note is raised by a half step. So you go back to what we started with, the sixth note of the major playing that scale, the minor scale. But when you get to the seventh note of that minor scale, you raise it by a half step and this is the sound you get. You can hear the strength of that raised seventh propelling you to the tonic, A in this case. Compare the difference before with a modal sound. It could go up but it sounds pretty good staying here. Compared to the raised seventh, it gives you the dominant chord major. It begs for resolution. So if you had a piece of music with no sharps or flats and you have G sharps all over the place, it could very well be, and it probably is, in A minor, the relative minor of C major. You should be aware of this another form of the minor that's also very common in Western music which is the melodic minor. The melodic minor has a raised sixth and seventh and sounds like this. However it descends with the natural minor. So if you have a piece with no sharps or flats, you'd be hunting down G sharps in particular and possibly F sharps. And if there's a lot of them and you look at the harmonies and there's a lot of A minor chords and the piece ends on an A minor chord, it could very well be in the minor, in A minor not C major. So how does this help you with other key signatures? Well, if you know your key signatures, for example, if you had two sharps, you might know that two sharps would be F sharp and C sharp. Go up a half step from the C sharp, that could be D major. But if it's in the minor, you go to the sixth note of that major scale and form the minor, the relative minor, one, two, three, four, five, six. So if you have two sharps in your key signature, it might be in B minor and the B minor scale would have a raised seventh.

Instead of being A natural, the harmonic would have the A sharp. And if it was in the melodic form, it may have a raised sixth and seventh. And it would come down as a natural minor. So anytime you have a key signature, figure out the major key first, then go to the sixth note of that major key and play all the notes of that major scale from the sixth note to the next sixth note an octave higher. And when you get to the seventh note of that minor scale, by raising it, figure out what the accidental. It won't always be a sharp. It could be a natural that would raise the note. If the seventh note was already a flat, then you would, for example, if you were in D flat major with five flats, go to the sixth note, one, two, three, four, five, six. And you play your one, two, three, four, five, six. And the seventh note raised would be an A natural.

So if you had five flats, you would be looking for A naturals to determine whether you were in D flat major or B flat minor.

I hope this makes sense to you. And if any of you have questions, you can address them here at livingpianist.com and YouTube in the comments section. I try to answer as much as I can for you and make future videos based upon your questions.

Again, LivingPianos is your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me. Ring the bell, thumbs up, and more videos to come for you. See you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/what-are-minor-scales/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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