Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Welcome to Alicia's Open Counseling!

This blog will be an extension of my Open Counseling class at Musicians Institute. I'll be posting anything I think of that relates to keyboard playing, singing, recording, theory - whatever. If you have questions, I'll be happy to answer them as best I can.

Cheers, Alicia

posted by Alicia Morgan @ 10:46 PM  

6 Comments:

  • At 1:10 AM, Blogger X said…

    Hey! I'm confused about this one thing in music theory.

    The natural minor scale (aeolian - the 6th of the greek modes) is said to be the 6th degree of the major scale (ionian - 1st of the greek modes).

    This means that the natural minor scale is a minor 3rd from its relative major one, right?

    When it comes to harmonic and melodic minor they consist of notes that aren't used to build the greek modes.

    To me it seems that the harmonic and the melodic minor should both have their own set of modes, I might be wrong though 'cause I'm don't know that much about theory.

    If I'm right about this though - how come that other scales produced by the same orders and distances of notes (but not the same starting notes) as the harmonic and the melodic minor seem to be related to as numeral degrees of the harmonic and the melodic minor scales?

    Shouldn't there be such a thing as a relative major placed a minor third from the harmonic and the melodic minor scales which should be considered the first degree or starting point of their mode cycles?

    I think I'm lost...

     

  • At 2:55 AM, Blogger Alicia Morgan said…

    Sabina -

    I have some links here that might tell you what you want to know, or at least point in that direction:

    http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory25.htm

    http://www.ibreathemusic.com/article/108/3

    http://www.globalbass.com/archives/nov2001/modesharmminor.htm

    http://www.andymilne.dial.pipex.com/Melodic.shtml

    http://www.andymilne.dial.pipex.com/Harmonicmi.shtml

    http://www.outsideshore.com/primer/primer/ms-primer-4-3.html

    This stuff gets pretty esoteric, but if you feel like digging around, check it out!

    If this doesn't answer your question, I'll dig around some more.

    cheers, Alicia

     

  • At 2:02 AM, Blogger X said…

    From reading what you linked me to it seems I was right about that the harmonic and melodic minor scales both have other "modes" starting from different degrees of their scales. That makes sense, I guess.

    I still don't understand why the harmonic and the melodic MINOR scales/keys are considered the first "mode" of their mode cycles. Why aren't the MAJOR scales/keys a minor third above considered as the starting point?

    I might have missed something and not make sense here, I'm not totally sure about this.

     

  • At 2:19 AM, Blogger Alicia Morgan said…

    I think it is because the harmonic and melodic are not related to the major scale the way that the ionian and aeolian are related - they don't share the exact same notes with another scale.

    The starting point of a mode is its own 'home base' tone - so, for instance, if you're in the key of G and your next chord is an A major, which is not the ii minor, but has a note outside the G scale - C#. You would then play a G lydian (with the raised 4, C#) over that chord, which has the same notes as a D major scale. They are not interchangeable, however, because the 'tone center' is G (the key of the song) and not D, So you would call that scale G lydian for that reason.

     

  • At 2:25 AM, Blogger Alicia Morgan said…

    Here's something interesting:

    http://www.ibreathemusic.com/article/108/0

     

  • At 3:57 AM, Blogger X said…

    Thanks a lot for your help! Have a nice weekend!

     

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