Explaining the melodic minor Options

[Hammerklavier]

And when you use solfa it is all so clear and simple...

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I was just about to say 'Use the Solfa system' but Cyrilla already did!

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[maggiemay]

Linda ff, I am puzzled as to why you regard the minor with flattened sixth and sharpened seventh as the 'normal' form.

[andante_in_c]

This topic was raised in the Theory forum, and there are those of us who have to teach theory independently of instrumental lessons, to those who don't study their instrument with their theory teacher. Some of my theory pupils have not yet met the melodic minor in their instrumental lessons (many do not meet them until Grade 6) and therefore need it explained. And yes, I do demonstrate the sound on the piano.

[morceau]

Interesting topic. Just to go back to the OP. I think it's important to get pupils understanding key signatures from the very start. Once they are learning scales, C, D, G and F, I am drilling them each week about the key signatures and expect them to be able to name them for each scale. When we get on to minor scales we start from the natural minor - so the link with the major is established. They find the relative minors for all the major scales they can already play. We play up and down the natural minors. Then we try sharpening the seventh to "make it sound nicer" (apologies for this cop-out!!) When they get a new minor scale to learn I expect them to work it out and explain to me what they are doing - play the natural minor, find the 7th and sharpen it - then we look at the book to confirm whether they got it right or not.

When we get to melodic minors it's a simple step to say that this one has both sharpened 6th and 7th on the way up - but we ditch them both and come down in the natural minor on the way back down.

I was taught scales by rote with no understanding of how they all fitted together, so I'm quite keen on making sure they understand the theory early on.

[Cyrilla]

I'm puzzled as to why l,t,di is acceptable but not d r ma

Because la is the tonic in the minor. The only time we would generally use 'd r maw' is in a major piece with a blue note.

To use la as the tonic suggests to me an adherence to the relative minor, to use do in the minor, an adherence to the tonic minor.

No, not necessarily. As I said before, in G major G is do and in G minor G is la. It's very difficult to explain in words (as I said, 'explaining' rarely works...).

Linda ff, I am puzzled as to why you regard the minor with flattened sixth and sharpened seventh as the 'normal' form.

Yes, me too. If anything is the 'normal' form it's the Aeolian mode, which developed first. Musica Ficta caused the death of the modes when the sharpened leading note crept in to minor modes as well as being naturally in the major one.

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[linda.ff]

Linda ff, I am puzzled as to why you regard the minor with flattened sixth and sharpened seventh as the 'normal' form.

If you start from key-signatures and scales, I think you're starting from the wrong end. A scale is only a run of notes in a particular key and not the key itself. If you play a 5-finger piece in a major key and then lower the third, you will have the same tonic and dominant, but the mode will be different. You are in the minor. You haven't had to play a full octave scale to put you in the minor.

Now add the sixth. Like in KumBaYah. Because of the strength of the dominant, the sixth has a natural "pull" towards it and the distance is only a semitone. This is assuming you're only going up to it and back.

In music, as in many other things, theory follows practice and not the other way around. That semitone is what we will "naturally" want to use in the minor but not the major (and even in the major it doesn't sound too bad for a bit of local colour) because that is what composers have used "by default" since tonality ws getting established in about the 17th century. If you sang KumBaYah in the minor, you probably wouldn't sing a major sixth. It's been suggested that the sixth is flat because that gives us a minor chord for IV - I think it's the other way around: the chords use whatever "version" of the notes is appropriate at that moment.

My usual patter with pupils if I show them this is "why bother going up a whole tone when you're only going to come down again?" and none of them has yet put me on the spot by saying "but what about the major?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

But if you take a tune which just tips one note below the tonic and back, like Sur le Pont D'Avignon, you will instinctively use a raised seventh, just a semitone below, if you are putting it into the minor. Try playing or singing the Grand Old Duke of York in the minor. Assuming you choose C minor, when you get to "marched them down again", will you naturally sing/play Eb C D B C or Eb C D Bb C? My money is on your choosing the B natural, again, why go down a tone when you're ony coming back up again?

So we do feel more comfortable, more natural with the lowered sixth but the raised seventh in melodies. The trouble is, that when we try to put them into a scale, if we go up or down including both the 6th and the 7th, we are left with a big gap. This is why earlier I said the harmonic minor was "not so much a scale as a set of notes" - if you like, the "contents" of the minor mode of that tonality. We will use the notes of that scale quite comfortably if we're not travelling through both 6 and 7 in sequence,

I think we use the contents of the harmonic minor most of the time. There's always the option of the raised sixth, and/or of the lowered 7th, if we're left with an uncomfortable interval. Sometimes the augmented 2nd does sound anything from inoffensive to positively desirable, of course.

In other words, 6 and 7 are a moveable feast. No doubt there can be examples cited involving the hexachords as described in medieval theory, but once we start thinking major/minor, they don't have any direct relevance. We don't sing in the Aeolian mode unless we're using an archaic or folk flavour, as a rule. Put a tune into the minor an you will use flattened 6ths and sharpened 7ths. Of course the primary chords we are used to help to reinforce this - IV is minor, V is major, but why do you think that is? It's because the middle of those two chords, as someone said yesterday, will be the note which has the natural pull towards the dominant and the tonic respectively.

I think I don't use key-signatures AT ALL when teaching the first two minor scales, which are C and D. I'll teach them for the pieces, and gradually from about grade 2 onwards I'll start using them to help to remind them what is in the scale. But scales are not keys, and the key-signature of the "relative major" is at best a means to an end in the minor. It doesn't tell you the whole truth about the key.

I teach "a key signature has teo jobs: it's an instruction and a label. The instruction is (eg) "play all Fs as F#s"

[sorry, hit "post" before I'd finished - now read on]

and the label is "this is in the key of either G major or E minor". For pianists the instruction is by far the more important: even if you don't know about minors, if you sharpen upir Fs and do whatever else you're told with Cs and Ds, it will come out sounding right; for singers (and some instrumentalists almost certainly) the instruction is the important part - only with perfect pitch will you be having to think about which note to sharpen - but you need to know the position of your tonic (and dominant) to be able to read the music. So at best, a key signature of one sharp, if it's minor, tells you that your tonic is E and we'll deal with 6 and 7 individually aswe come to them.

I don't know if I've made it clearer or muddier. I don't say all of this to my pupils in one go like this (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[linda.ff]

I'm puzzled as to why l,t,di is acceptable but not d r ma

Because la is the tonic in the minor. The only time we would generally use 'd r maw' is in a major piece with a blue note.

Sorry, I should have been more specific and said "in this context". It starts with a major third. It finishes on a major chord. It's ambiguous but it's definitely not "in A minor". The fact that there's nothing in the key-signature is neither here nore there, we all know a key-signature of nothing doesn't always mean Cmaj/Amin

To use la as the tonic suggests to me an adherence to the relative minor, to use do in the minor, an adherence to the tonic minor.

No, not necessarily. As I said before, in G major G is do and in G minor G is la. It's very difficult to explain in words (as I said, 'explaining' rarely works...).

No (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) it doesn't work there, certainly. Repeating isn't explaining, but if I can try to explain my last sentence there, I mean that tonic la suggests that a minor key is closely related to a major key which doesn't share it's tonic/dominant, whereas do tonic suggests that they're essentially the same key, in a sort of Jekyll-Hyde way. I know - and I guess the whole forum knows my now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) which I prefer.

Linda ff, I am puzzled as to why you regard the minor with flattened sixth and sharpened seventh as the 'normal' form.

Yes, me too. If anything is the 'normal' form it's the Aeolian mode, which developed first. Musica Ficta caused the death of the modes when the sharpened leading note crept in to minor modes as well as being naturally in the major one.

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We haven't been using those modes since about Handel. I've dealt with it more fully in another post, but unless you're Vaughan Williams giving a deliberately archaic atmosphere to your music you won't use the aeolian mode when transferring a leody to the tonic minor, a la Schubert. Play the last two phrases of Sur Le Pont D'Avignon in C major. Put it into the tonic minor by flattening the E. If you use a B natural just before the end it will sound, well, minor. Use a Bb and it will sound nice, but like an old folk tune. I don't care that the theory books call it the "natural" minor, I don't think those notes are the "default" for minor.

[Cyrilla]

We haven't been using those modes since about Handel. I've dealt with it more fully in another post, but unless you're Vaughan Williams giving a deliberately archaic atmosphere to your music you won't use the aeolian mode when transferring a leody to the tonic minor, a la Schubert. Play the last two phrases of Sur Le Pont D'Avignon in C major. Put it into the tonic minor by flattening the E. If you use a B natural just before the end it will sound, well, minor. Use a Bb and it will sound nice, but like an old folk tune. I don't care that the theory books call it the "natural" minor, I don't think those notes are the "default" for minor.

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Bartok and Kodaly both used modes in 20th century compositions and theirs certainly were not used in order to give an 'archaic' feel.

Surely we study music of all periods and styles? Dismissing the original form of the minor scale as 'archaic' or merely one which 'gives a folk feel' seems to denigrate it.

In Kodaly musicianship classes we study all scales and modes in their historic context. One of the things that solfa enables one to do easily is transform a melody into its relative or tonic minor, or into a mode. My rendition of 'This Old Man' in the Phrygian mode is renowned (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) .

So we do transform major melodies into both the natural minor/Aeolian mode and also the harmonic minor - a lot of learning and understanding of the character and development of the various forms of the minor scale can come from such work. Transforming the piece into another minor mode (Dorian or Phrygian) also gives more insights of this nature.

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[maggiemay]

Haha - This Old Man in the Fridge! just tried it! that was fun.

Linda ff - I sing in a choir, and I regularly have to sing in modes. Or in something between a mode and a key.

Charles Wood wrote music in the Phrygian mode. Just another example. There was a grade one piece a few years back written in the Mixolydian mode. I remember someone posted on the forums in high indignation, suggesting the key signature had been omitted (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) (no, I don't remember who it was). Does anyone remember the title ? something about a Cat. And it's not just an isolated example, there have been others.

[Cyrilla]

Haha - This Old Man in the Fridge! just tried it! that was fun.

Linda ff - I sing in a choir, and I regularly have to sing in modes. Or in something between a mode and a key.

Charles Wood wrote music in the Phrygian mode. Just another example. There was a grade one piece a few years back written in the Mixolydian mode. I remember someone posted on the forums in high indignation, suggesting the key signature had been omitted (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) (no, I don't remember who it was). Does anyone remember the title ? something about a Cat. And it's not just an isolated example, there have been others.

And Benjamin Britten used the acoustic scale (a hybrid of the Lydian and Mixolydian modes).

Ah, Maggie, I remember the piece - was it called 'Sleeping Cat'?? I remember the poster indignantly going to complain to the board because the piece, which seemed to be in G major, had no F#s - actually, as you say, it was in the Mixolydian mode.

LOL to 'This Old Man in the Fridge'!!!!!!!!!!! It's that last phrase which is so wonderful with the augmented 4th and flattened second at the end (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif) .

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[maggiemay]

*imagines lovely harmonised version*

[linda.ff]

We haven't been using those modes since about Handel. I've dealt with it more fully in another post, but unless you're Vaughan Williams giving a deliberately archaic atmosphere to your music you won't use the aeolian mode when transferring a leody to the tonic minor, a la Schubert. Play the last two phrases of Sur Le Pont D'Avignon in C major. Put it into the tonic minor by flattening the E. If you use a B natural just before the end it will sound, well, minor. Use a Bb and it will sound nice, but like an old folk tune. I don't care that the theory books call it the "natural" minor, I don't think those notes are the "default" for minor.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

Bartok and Kodaly both used modes in 20th century compositions and theirs certainly were not used in order to give an 'archaic' feel.

Surely we study music of all periods and styles? Dismissing the original form of the minor scale as 'archaic' or merely one which 'gives a folk feel' seems to denigrate it.

In Kodaly musicianship classes we study all scales and modes in their historic context. One of the things that solfa enables one to do easily is transform a melody into its relative or tonic minor, or into a mode. My rendition of 'This Old Man' in the Phrygian mode is renowned (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) .

So we do transform major melodies into both the natural minor/Aeolian mode and also the harmonic minor - a lot of learning and understanding of the character and development of the various forms of the minor scale can come from such work. Transforming the piece into another minor mode (Dorian or Phrygian) also gives more insights of this nature.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I'm afraid I'm standing my ground on this one. I do understand what you're saying there, but nowhere have I siad we "shouldn't" use the modes, nowhere have I said that "nobody" uses them, or that they don't sound good or make the music more interesting.

But I will ask one question - if the flattened sixth and the raised seventh are not the normal, almost the "default" positions for those degress, with the minor as used in mainstream western classical music (and Kodaly and Bartok I don't include there, they were both to some degree nationalist and brought both historical, folk and experimental elements to bear on the tonality of their music) - why are we teaching the harmonic minor scale at all?

[maggiemay]

Maybe because it's on the exam syllabus ? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

[linda.ff]

Maybe because it's on the exam syllabus ? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

OK - next question. Why do you thin that is? I mean do you really think that's the only reason to teach it?

As to the normal choice of note for the 6th and the 7th, don't look to me for explanations, look to the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. See what they normally use in the minor. It won't be invariable.

They are the source of a lot of what our present day "rules" of basic harmony are based on, or were for a good two centuries. And yes, they break them themselves, but exceptions are exceptions.

[sbhoa]

Maybe because it's on the exam syllabus ? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

OK - next question. Why do you thin that is? I mean do you really think that's the only reason to teach it?

I must confess I can't think of another reason.....(really....)

Answers on a postcard please.