I am currently trying to get my junior music student prepared for Grade 3 theory in the summer. She's very capable, and can manage most of the areas, but she does seem to struggle with melodic minors.

She does play piano, but hasn't covered them yet on piano. I also don't want to rely too much on her other musical skills, so have been trying to get her to look at songs which use the minor, like Greensleeves (which has a fab example of melodic minor in), but it's not helping.

Any suggestions of other ways to explain it, before I resort to getting her to learn the rule by wrote (endlessly drawing out all the melodic minors, or something equally as dull)?

Consider the tonic and the dominant. they are boss notes. In the harmonic minor (not so much a scale, despite the fact that it's the only one some teachers teach up to grade 5, as a repository of notes for making chords and tunes from) the 6th snd 7th notes are very "clingy" and hug the tonic and dominant, staying only a semitone away.

As this leaves a big gap that makes you sound like a snake charmer, if you're going up, persuade the clingy number 6 to go up a semitone - now a tone away from the dominant and a smoother run up to the tonic. On the way down it's the other way - the 6th can settle back where it was, but the 7th needs to come down.

The other way (though this helps more with playing than writing, I think) is to think of escalators. You can't come down the up escalator, you get chucked out of the shop (I know that from experience, and it wasn't me doing it, it was my friend, but the manager caught her and we both got sent out ) So with the choice of a tone or a semitone away from the note above or below, it's "high up, low down". Whatever you do with 6 and 7 on the way up, drop them by a semitone on the way down.

It still isn't what happens in real music, though

Here's a graphic I made for a pupil who asked about it
http://deemajormusic.co.uk/lff/wp-content/...odic-minors.pdf

That sound confusing and overcomplicated. Why not just say you raise the 6th and 7th on the way up and neither on the way down? Very simple and easy to remember.

but not as pretty. And how can you "raise neither"?

By sticking to what's in the key signature?
One way to think of the descent is that it's the relative major but not starting on the tonic.
Different explanations work for different people.... the fun of teaching.

Why are you trying to make it sound pretty at the expense of having a clear explanation. I don't see what you mean about "raise neither". They are a semitone higher than the key signature on the way up and not on the way down. It is the harmonic minor where the 7th is raised on the way down.

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

I've met so many students who can't remember the rules, believe me, or can blindly learn and obey rules but have little idea of why they're doing it. Having a picture often helps to set it in the mind further. And the rules, while correct, and succinct, often come into the category of Never mind why, just do it. The attraction of the 6th and 7th to the tonic and dominant in the harmonic minor explains why you get this big gap. Then the movement up and down explains how and why the alteration happens.

Also we have to remember that building a minor scale doesn't always depend on having the key-signature. I haven't checked grade 3 theory recently, but I seem to remember scales being required with or without the key-signature.

One of my pupils has a mother who, though now a scientist, says she learnt piano in Australia up to "concert standard" and says she was never ever taught melodic minors - they just weren't on the curriculum in Australia.


Unfortunately they've yet to incorporate sol-fa into theory exams. Possibly a pity, but then think of the confusion for candidates from some parts of Europe

But if writing without key signature wouldn't you start from knowing what it is? I know I would.
I do think that your graphic explanation could be useful for some people though.

I know it doesn't address the why but I always remember it as follows:

From the tonic
Up is as the major but with a minor third
Down is as the minor key signature (or as relative major keysignature depending on how you prefer to think of it)

It does rely on knowing both major/ minor key signatures though.

I think primary aged children are more used to knowing something is right before understanding why. (They know that grass is green before you tell them about photosynthesis and chlorophyl) It doesn't mean that they won't understand it later. All that "being attracted to the dominant" makes it much less clear rather than more so, particularly for a young child as in the OP. A case of learning to run before you can walk.

Fair enough. So what do you do when a child says, as they sometimes do, "why?"?

The problem with some of the rules is that it's easy to get the words confused.

I do know one thing: I teach all of mine melodic and harmonic from the word go - even at TG Initial Grade - I teach it very much the way I've described (but obviously showing them on the keyboard) and I know it works.

But then I'm also the person who thinks the minor is derived from the tonic major and not from the relative major It does mean learning key-signatures is a separate job, though, but I still think it makes more sense.


That's how I teach B minor. But as you say, it doesn't explain the why.

The answer to why would depend on the child and how much detail they could cope with. In some cases the answer to why would be "I think for now you will have to take my word for it, and later when you have learned more it will all make sense". If you give a primary age child the same explanation you would to an adult with far more musical experience then you will confuse them.

I'm afraid I agree; but I do like the the idea of the lifts, up one way and down another, and think it would stick in the mind of a young child very well to at least become the way to recognising the difference between harmonic and melodic minor.

As an aside, though, the whole question is being complicated now since learners of some instruments are required to learn natural minor in the early practical grades (Grade 1 violin being a case in point). I am teaching it to the first up-coming grade 1 violinist who has had to learn it for the new syllabus, and (because I am so accustomed to hearing the other minor forms) it really grates on my ear - and I think it does on hers, too. I can perfectly understand the reasons for its introduction, as a way to later understand how the other forms work, but teaching young children that there are three forms of the minor is, I think, too confusing, especially as the natural minor isn't covered in the early theory grades.

Sorry,

Most of the pupils I have taught it to are of primary school age. Not like 6 year-olds, but 7-11. They understand the harmonic and melodic by shape (as well as the rules, though they probably can't recite the rules parrot-fashion)

An equally non technical answer maybe:

There are lots of different types of scales, some are all tones (play whole tone scales), some are all semi tones (chromatics). Others are made up of a mixture of the two. Some of the patterns of tones/ semitones sound particulaly nice and are used in lots of different types of music, these are sometimes given special name. This one is called the melodic minor.

That might explain "why" we're playing this scale, but it certainly goes no way towards explaining "why" the notes behave as they do. It sounds like an answer given to a 6-year-old.

*shrugs*

it was merely intended to be a variant of "you'll just have to take my word for it".

How about "you don't need to worry your pretty little head about that"?

If they're not "ready" to know why but just do as they're told, they'll learn to play them, but possibly not understand them, and all you produce is performing fleas

I have to admit my first response to your explanation was that it was "overcomplicated". But, I looked at your graphic and would now consider your method to be "complete". I think it explains the construction of the minor scales quite nicely without the complication of key signatures and "relative" keys. But then - I like pictures.

So if they aren't ready for an overcomplicated explanation you don't let them progress at all? Do you keep them repeating things at the same level for two or three years until they are mature enough for your explanation. Not all children do things at the same rate. Some may need to accept it is so and move on and come back to the reason why at a later date.

Your pretty diagram doesn't explain it any better than the straightforward raise them both on the way up and not on the way down anyway.

Minor key signatures are a very unsatisfactory compromise anyway, and I wonder if there was a better way they could have developed (though we're stuck with them now, I guess). I know I've already said I think C major has a lot more to do with C minor than it does with A major. Imagine a key signature which actually shows the MAJOR key, but is then followed by some kind of minor symbol showing the alteration - no, I'm not sure that would quite do it either.


I can't declare that I never have and never would use a "never mind why, just do it" approach, but it would only be as a last resort.



But unlike you, I've tried both methods, and I know mine works.

No, of course I don't keep them hanging around until they're ready to have a complicated answer. And do you know why? Because when you have a pupil in front of you, and a piano to show them on, IT ISN'T THAT COMPLICATED.

I've never held a pupil back because they didn't understand something. When they're ready to do grade 1 - or TG Initial - I show them that the bottom of the A minor scale goes like so, and that there are variations at the top.

First I show them the tonic and the dominant, even if I don't give them those names, then I say that because they're boss notes, the other two notes want to cling to them - and I show them on the piano. They aren't reading it on a computer monitor, that's the difference and get them to play them and feel how they fit.

Then I get them to try out the whole scale with those notes, and they almost without exception say it sounds Egyptian, Arabian, like a snake charmer, or whatever. So I tell them that's one sort, called the harmonic minor. I've never yet had a child who didn't get that far.

Then I SHOW them how we get rid of the snake charmer effect, and this actually looks quite nice in A minor, because it really does look like escalators - two blacks up, and two whites down. And they play that one too. And I've never yet had a child who didn't understand it.

Then I give them the choice between the two. I'd say it's somewhere between a quarter and a third of them who plump for the harmonic, either because they like the sound, or the feel,or occasionally becasue it's the same going both ways. But more of them choose the melodic. Sometimes they take some time to learn which name belongs to which.

I realise some of the things I propose on this forum seem like crackpot ideas - such as teaching pedalling by saying just stick your foot on the pedal, we'll deal with lifting it off once you've got that bit. But you have to understand that these come from years of trying them out and knowing that THEY WORK.

It does seem like a crackpot idea to use two sheets of paper where one sentence says the same thing, but I think we will have to agree to differ.

I don't "use two sheets of paper" with a pupil. I do SHOW them what this is about, and then have them try it. Showing them knocks away a lot of the verbal explanation that needs to go round it.

And "one sentence"? Forgotten already. Particularly if it's had no other explanation

It takes about five minutes to learn both the harmonic and melodic A minor scales my way. And the next week they can still do it.

You don't seem to believe that when I do it, it works. So yes, we'll agree to differ. You can say it doesn't work (you haven't done it that way) and I can say it does (I have)

I didn't say it didn't work. You are putting words in my mouth!

I just said that the pretty pages you posted (which you said you had given to your pupils, giving the impression that is your standard method) said nothing that I could see that was more than what I said. The melodic minor has the 6th and 7th note sharpened on the way up and not on the way down. I can't see how that is more forgettable than trying to remember which two notes like to get cosy with the ones next to them, which seemed to be the basis of your explanation.

Where did I suggest you wouldn't demonstrate the two extra sharps on the way up? You seem to be deliberately trying to misunderstand and saying that the only person who can explain anything is you!

I avoid using the word sharpened.
I describe it as raised by a semitone as it doesn't always result in notes called sharp.

That was precisely why I worded it as raised in my original post, but Linda didn't like the fact that I said you raised neither on the way down. (She didn't say why)

OK, first you need to read my first post on this subject more carefully. I said I made that graphic for "a pupil who asked me for it". And actually it was an adult pupil. And just to clarify things, she said it was about the minor scales in general and the difference between the harrmonic and the melodic, And she said it made more sense to her now that she'd seen the graphic. I've only shown it to a couple of other pupils since, and that was after I'd already shown them how it worked on the piano.

I teach the harmonic and the melodic together as a rule, and I used that notion of the 6th and 7th being attracted to the tonic and dominant (or being a bit clingy) because it explained the big gap between them. That was nothing to do with the melodic minor. The subsequent description, of raising the 6th on the way up, or lowering the 7th on the way down, was how to get rid of the big gap. Not how to make a melodic minor out of a key-signature with no reference to the harmonic.

In fact when I first do minors, I don't do key-signatures at all. I do C minor from C major in just the 5-finger position. Neither do I do key-signatures when I first teach the A minor scale because it isn't necessary. I do key-signatures for pieces, but for the first two or three scales I just build the scale, using the tonic and dominant as its scaffolding.

It's just my take on theory (by which I don't mean the theory exam, I mean the way music works, a subject I've been studying for over half a century)

So, no, you didn't say it didn't work, but you said it was over-complicated (remember though that this is teaching both minors) and would confuse younger pupils. I can assure you it doesn't.

As for raising neither on the way down, I am thinking of a scale as going up and then down, so the 6th and 7th are already raised on the way up. To say that when you go back down you "don't raise" them, rather than that you lower them, sounds ambiguous. Please remember I'm talking about the way a scale is built in itself and not with relation to a key-signature.

If you build your melodic out of your harmonic - which is the natural position of the 6th and 7th notes when not passing up or down through both, by virtue of their attraction to the tonic and dominant - you raise the 6th to go up (the 7th is already "high"), and you lower the 7th to come down (allowing the 6th to fall back into place),

Minor scales are not a by-product of a key-signature. They are a different colouring of the major scale on the same tonic.

Just to say that my daughter had been struggling for quite a while with the theory of melodic scales. She knew what they were supposed to sound like, and could play them, but couldn't understand how to write them down until her piano teacher told her about natural minors. I had been taught years ago to raise the 6th and 7th notes and flatten them on the way down. She kept getting confused about what she was flattening them from. It was much easier for her to remember to think about the key signature, add a raised 6th and 7th note on the way up and then just stick to the key signature on the way down.

Yes, that is what happens when you play them. It depends on knowing what the key-signature is, of course.

But when you first learn them, and you probably only do one octave, where you will have trouble is on the turnaround at the top, and nthere it's easier to look at both the 6 & 7 as they go up, and lower them - remember you've only just played them if you're at the top - as you come down. It's easy enough with things like A minor or C minor where it's one colour up and the other down, but harder where there's no easy visual guide. That's the situation where thinking about "lowering" them helps, at the turnaround.

I suppose it depends on how you've learnt your scales. Some people assiduously use a scale book; I never do, and as far as playing them is oncerned, I prefer to think in tones and semitones at the top, and have a "high" pair and a "low" pair for 6 and 7 - high going up and low going down

I stick to - "use the notes/key signature from the relative major and raise the 7th up and down for harmonic, raise the 6th and 7th going up for melodic but change nothing going down". For children we draw army majors and their cousins, the minors, to explain relatives. I let them play them on the piano, despite the fact that most are non-pianists.
No-one seems not to get it, but I still can't explain "why" the pattern of notes must be different in a simple way. Why are there the different forms? Sorry if this is fundamental, but it has never been explained to me satisfactorily on my musical journey.

In my mind too much talking and not enough doing = confusion.

I explain the different names by showing how the notes in the harmonic minor provide the best chords for harmonising a minor melody, because the raised seventh degree is used to give a major chord V. I play a I-V-I sequence with both a minor and a major dominant chord and they agree the major chord sounds better.

I then explain that the melodic minor scale gives a smoother melody line than the bump between the sixth and seventh degree of the harmonic minor scale, and so is often used when writing melodies in a minor key.

Golly.

I dunno....I just teach my pupes the notes....

Maybe that's where I've been going wrong...

Time-for-Wine-Bag x

hmm...

Either use sol-fa, or a phrase like 'raise the sixth and seventh note of the scale by a semitone, in the upward direction only' would be plenty enough, in my opinion.

Make it easy and straightforward, and concentrate on making music

Natural minor: l,t,d r m f s l
Harmonic minor: l,t, d r m f si l
Melodic minor: l,t,d r m fi si l (natural minor descending).

Simples.

I like this approach. It explains "why", for people like me who haven't grown out of the two year old "why" phase.

Yes, I like that explanation too. Just used it on daughter who plays both (you have to these days for AMEB I am afraid) but who gets a choice of which to use in AMEB theory. Despite my combined family knowledge gleaned from well over 10 teachers between the 3 of us all doing two instruments over the years no one had much idea about the why. Clearly we were all white sheep who did what we were told and followed the rules. Daughter immediately asked what the point was when taught the two forms and none of her teachers had anything very useful to offer on the topic at the time.

Cyrilla, may I ask something please? Since it seems that most disciplines that use sol-fa name the minor as l, t, d etc rather than d. r, ma(maw?) - do you also use the technical names of the steps of the scale at all, and if so, in the minor, do you call la the tonic?


Well, that's what I do in the long run, too - but what was the thread called again?

Cyrilla's teaching right now, but I think I'm right in saying that yes, "la" is the tonic in the minor scale.

No need to snap at me, linda.ff - I just tend to keep things very, very simple that's all.

I've only ever had one pupil fail their scales in an AB exam so I guess something's working. (And yes, I can prove it!)

Each to their own.

Interesting reading.

Bagpuss

Sorry, I wasn't meaning to snap, it was just that several of us have been explaining how or why it's the way it is because that was what we assumed the OP wanted, not just a rule to go by. We can all do that as well and I'm sure we all do (for the record, I do it the way I described for grade 1 where the minors are A and D, but after that I do gradually start to revert to the "rules", where necessary, as I think by that time my pupils understand the structure.

OK, following up the tonic/la business, what do you do about music which has a major/minor dichotomy such as several of Schubert's songs (there will be many around on r3 at the moment as it's wall-to-wall Schubert until about Christmas now) such as the first one in Die Winterreise - do you keep switching the same keynote from do to la? Or to use a non-classical example, Cockles and Mussels which is sometimes sung with the third verse on the tonic minor

I accept that neither way is going to be perfect. I grew up knowing those syllables from a very early age, though I can't for the life of me remember where I learnt them - it certainly wasn't in school, and I don't think it was my dad who was my early music "teacher" if a steady osmosis can be called teaching, and yes, I certainly thought of the minor as being la-ti-do-re-mi; it was only later when I relaised that the minor and the major starting on the same note were really different modes, different "colours" if you like, of the same key, that I wondered if it ought to be do-re-maw, and I feel quite sure I've heard it being done that way years and years ago (though I might be remembering someone doing it with a fixed doh)

I know this brings us back to medieval modes, and I'd guess this means the Dorian starts on D and the Phrygian on E and so on. But the minor as we normally use it isn't really quite the same thing; it's not simply the aeolian mode; it shares the same strong structure of the tonic and dominant with its major, drops or lowers its third according to what mood it's in (I like blues, it can't make up its mind, and the piano is very frustrated that it can't just sing down the crack like singer can) - and there's a quick piece by Kabalevsky in op.39 called Clowns which goes ABC# ABC(nat) ABCBABC(nat) and so on all the way through*: I'd love to see that rendered in sol-fa, though appreciate it wasn't really developed for that kind of music.

One last question: why is it sometimes called "tonic sol-fa"? Is that expressin used in Kodaly practice, and does it mean tonic as in keynote, or something slightly different?

*well, not just those notes, the clowns would soon be booed off (y'boring!) but switching from major to minor intervals at almost every beat

I think possibly something that bothers me about all this is the word, 'explaining'. In my experience, 'explaining' is never enough...

I have to admit I'm not really sure why it was called 'tonic solfa' by Curwen - we now prefer the term 'relative solfa'. It basically means that any note can be the tonic.

Yes, there is a school which uses 'do-re-maw' but we don't. Absolutely 'la' is the tonic in the minor and we teach students both relative minor and tonic minor in this way.

I'm not totally sure what you mean about the 'major/minor dichotomy'. The wonderful Laszlo Nemes, Director of the Kodaly Institute, did a whole week's study of Die Winterreise with the advanced group at last year's summer school, but sadly I couldn't be in the group as I was teaching at the same time . I'm not familiar with the tonic minor version of Cockles and Mussels, but if it was in G major (say) to begin with, and then in G minor, you would sing the major version as starting 's, d dd dm' (G is do) and the tonic minor one as 'm l ll ld' (G is la - ie Bb is do).

I know the Kabalevsky piece - really there are two options: 'drm' then the do=la 'l,t,d' so 'drm / l,t,d / drmr / l,t,d' - or 'l,t, di / l,t,d' etc. Argh - this really looks nonsense and very complicated written down but it isn't in practice .

I'm unclear as to what you mean by 'the minor as we use it isn't....simply the Aeolian mode' .



(Btw, at the risk of embarrassing Bagpuss, she omits to say that the one pupil she's had fail their scales is the only one out of over 220 pupes to have done so...)

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



Because in it's "normal" form (as opposed to the so-called "natural" form which IS the aeolian mode) it has a semitone between the leading note and the tonic, and a semitone between the sixth and the dominant, because of (I've said this about ten times in this thread) the natural attraction of those strong degrees, almost like a kind of gravity. I don't give a monkeys about key-signatures when it comes to minor keys, I think they're the best of a bad job, but the raised leading note I don't feel is really accidental to the key itself.

This is why my definition of how the melodic minor is formed, even though the end result is the same, is different from many others on here. The sixth in naturally "flat" and the seventh naturally "sharp" and if you play melodies like 1234565432171, or 1234565-8-7-8 that's where they'll lie. It's only when ascending or descending through both the 6th and the 7th that it need smoothing out. And despite the way we play it in orthodox scales, many composers smooth out that snake-charmer gap the other way round, using the notes you'd expect ascending in a descending passage and vice versa - it makes no odds really in the music.

(I don't mean that I don't teach the accepted minor key-signatures, thye're absolutely necessary for sight-reading and theory, but I do rather wish notation had developed in a slightly different way, so as to be able to indicate that the tonic is the same as in the major on the same note)

It's obvious that we can't agree on this - not because either of us feels the other is "wrong" - I don't. But for one thing, it's clear that in sol-fa you have to jump in one direction or the other. 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.

It's taken me over 50 years studying all kinds of music music (including an Oxbridge degree) to grow in this conviction, it's not just an eccentricity.

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

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

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.

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.

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.





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...).




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.