what is the formula for the harmonic minore scale

This is the second method of discovering what notes are part of a minor scale. Now if you look at the scale degrees of Figure 3 you’ll notice the ♭3, ♭6, and ♭7.

This is important when you’re starting out since you may only know one or two scale patterns before you start playing with other people. What this means in everyday guitar playing is that you can play an A minor scale pattern over the chords in the C Major key without sounding out of key. Typically, you’d only refer to the relative minor as most things in western music theory relate back to the major keys or major scales.

The fact that these scales share the same notes, but start on different root notes make them relative scales. Notice that the A minor scale above, along with the C Major scale we used as an example, don’t have any sharps or flats. Then later on we’ll circle back to the other scale types you’ll come across. Here we’ll focus on major and natural minor scales so we can understand the context for keys. These come together to let the audience recognize a “happy song” or a “sad song.” It then lets us express ourselves melodically within the context of the harmonic environment we’ve created. These specific groups of notes allow us to create harmonic structures and patterns for us to play around with.

Scales in the most basic definition organize a specific pattern of notes from the chromatic scale. Similar to the way that intervals can be broken down into melodic and harmonic intervals, keys and scales have a similar relationship. More than many other topics in music theory, scales and keys give you a shorthand to communicate and understand what’s going on. Understanding these will help you immensely when you turn to the guitar magazines, start having conversations with other musicians, start playing with other musicians, or start to look to other songs to find out how they are put together. Building on what we’ve discussed with the chromatic scale and intervalposts, we’ll take a deep dive into the scales that we’ll use to practice guitar, solo, and analyze songs.

What is the formula for the harmonic minore scale