Harmonising a melodic minor melody

Axe_meister

So when Harmonising a melody written in melodic minor i.e. on the way down you flatten the 7th and the 6th, I assume the underlying chords would have to change with the melody?
Unlike harmonising a melody in a mode of the major scale where you can have quite a static chord progression.
In modern say prog rock, do people actually use the melodic minor (and it's modes) that often or do people stick to the Harmonic minor, precisely because of the wide intervals.
Now I've gotten the modes of the major scale under my belt and can navigate the entire fretboard in any mode and key. The next step is obviously the Harmonic/melodic minor modes.

viz

There is a very common and quite understandable misconception about the melodic minor scale that is very interesting (to me at least, as a nerd). And whilst you are asking about jazz and prog, I just wanna reiterate it, because if not stated, it can distort discussions about melodic minor. 

It is NOT the case that in real music, well, real classical music, the 6th and 7th are neccessarily raised on the way up and naturalised on the way down.

What it is, is that the melodic minor scale is a thing. a device that has been invented, as a tool to demonstrate a specific feature of minor music, namely that over the dominant chord, a melody can have the 6th and 7th raised. This is because the dominant is “allowed” to be a major chord, so its 2nd and 3rd are “allowed” be raised. (I’m saying allowed because all this was developed in Vivaldi’s time when people didn’t play a huge amount of experimantal jazz)

In other words, the scale has been designed to work over a dominant-to-minor-tonic cadence (V7-i). And to demonstrate the appropriate notes over that cadence. It’s been designed that, on the way up, the underlying harmony underneath starts as a silent minor tonic, an i chord, and that as you reach the upper 4 notes, you assume (and you can actually hear in your mind’s ear) that it switches to a V chord, and at the top of the scale, the harmony switches back to the i chord, so on the way down, you’re just playing the notes of the natural minor. 

But in real music, on the way up, the i chord might actually be playing, or the bVI chord or the bVII chord or any other chord, so the 6 and 7 would tend to be natural. And conversely, when the harmony is on the (majorised) V chord, it’s perfectly possible for a bit of the tune to be noodling around, up and down, with that 6 and 7 raised. So in real music, it’s not a quesion of up or down, it’s a question of what the harmony’s doing at the time. 

I did a weird little video about this once, I’ll see if it’s still there. 

So, your question about harmonising a melody in a minor key is a bit the other way round. As you asked how to harmonise a melody, not a scale, then you’d just be working out what the underlying harmony is. And then deciding whether or not to raise the 6 and 7. If you were harmonising from an existing tune, like they make you do in music theory exams, a raised 6 and 7 written in the tune would indicate to you that there must be a V chord underneath. But you’d very possibly find naturalised 6s and 7s too, on the way up, which might make you think oh, are we no longer “in melodic minor” anymore? But it’s actually just that you wouldn’t be on the V chord. In classical, melodic minor isn’t a key that you’re “in”, it’s just a concept to show how a major V is allowed in a minor key. 

So in classical music it doesn’t really make sense to talk about modes of the melodic minor scale, it just makes sense to say “the 5th mode of aeolian is often/ usually adjusted to have a raised 2 and 3”. 

In jazz, as you’ve rightly identified, melodic minor is treated as a genuine tone pallette, so modes of melodic minor are a thing. And in harmonising the scale in a jazz context, I’d keep the 6 and 7 raised, going up and down. 

And in prog, I dunno. Yngwie seems to like phrygian dominant, which is weird, because that’s just invented for chords really, but he likes the tunes with the large jump. Which is fine. Bless. 

If your question had been - how do I harmonise the melodic minor scale, then yes, creating underlying chords that allowed for raised 6 and 7 on the way up, and for naturalised notes on the way down, would be correct.

Do I win the prize for the most unnecessarily round-about answer to a question in the history of tFB?

viz

Here’s the ultimate demonstration of the above. 

6 and 7 naturalised on the way up and raised on the way down, as the chords go i, bVII, bVI, V. 

https://youtu.be/Gft1W6fy22k?si=8DRnNj9rszTF7878

viz

And here’s my weird little video trying to demonstrate it;

https://youtu.be/N76AwaQmNeY?si=sDKVk8HtVhhPUX1y

joeW

I’ve always found the changing going up vs down very odd.  I just use a maj 6th and 7th for the Mel minor and then use (mostly 4) of the modes in a similar way to major harmony - albeit a minor 251 uses 3 scales vs 1 for a major 251.  

The sounds that it creates for essentially one note difference vs major harmony is surprising.  

viz

Yep you have to understand, in your mind’s ear, what melody the harmony is trying to support - indeed, to understand what “harmonising” a scale, or any tune, is actually for. 

Clarky

viz said:

There is a very common and quite understandable misconception about the melodic minor scale that is very interesting (to me at least, as a nerd). And whilst you are asking about jazz and prog, I just wanna reiterate it, because if not stated, it can distort discussions about melodic minor. 

It is NOT the case that in real music, well, real classical music, the 6th and 7th are neccessarily raised on the way up and naturalised on the way down.

What it is, is that the melodic minor scale is a thing. a device that has been invented, as a tool to demonstrate a specific feature of minor music, namely that over the dominant chord, a melody can have the 6th and 7th raised. This is because the dominant is “allowed” to be a major chord, so its 2nd and 3rd are “allowed” be raised. (I’m saying allowed because all this was developed in Vivaldi’s time when people didn’t play a huge amount of experimantal jazz)

In other words, the scale has been designed to work over a dominant-to-minor-tonic cadence (V7-i). And to demonstrate the appropriate notes over that cadence. It’s been designed that, on the way up, the underlying harmony underneath starts as a silent minor tonic, an i chord, and that as you reach the upper 4 notes, you assume (and you can actually hear in your mind’s ear) that it switches to a V chord, and at the top of the scale, the harmony switches back to the i chord, so on the way down, you’re just playing the notes of the natural minor. 

But in real music, on the way up, the i chord might actually be playing, or the bVI chord or the bVII chord or any other chord, so the 6 and 7 would tend to be natural. And conversely, when the harmony is on the (majorised) V chord, it’s perfectly possibly for a bit of the tune to be noodling around, up and down, with that 6 and 7 raised. So in real music, it’s not a quesion of up or down, it’s a question of what the harmony’s doing at the time. 

I did a weird little video about this once, I’ll see if it’s still there. 

So, your question about harmonising a melody in a minor key is a bit the other way round. As you asked how to harmonise a melody, not a scale, then you’d just be working out what the underlying harmony is. And then deciding whether or not to raise the 6 and 7. If you were harmonising from an existing tune, like they make you do in music theory exams, a raised 6 and 7 written in the tune would indicate to you that there must be a V chord underneath. But you’d very possibly find naturalised 6s and 7s too, on the way up, which might make you think oh, are we no longer “in melodic minor” anymore? But it’s actually just that you wouldn’t be on the V chord. In classical, melodic minor isn’t a key that you’re “in”, it’s just a concept to show how a major V is allowed in a minor key. 

So in classical music it doesn’t really make sense to talk about modes of the melodic minor scale, it just makes sense to say “the 5th mode of aeolian is often/ usually adjusted to have a raised 2 and 3”. 

In jazz, as you’ve rightly identified, melodic minor is treated as a genuine tone pallette, so modes of melodic minor are a thing. And in harmonising the scale in a jazz context, I’d keep the 6 and 7 raised, going up and down. 

And in prog, I dunno. Yngwie seems to like phrygian dominant, which is weird, because that’s just invented for chords really, but he likes the tunes with the large jump. Which is fine. Bless. 

If your question had been - how do I harmonise the melodic minor scale, then yes, creating underlying chords that allowed for raised 6 and 7 on the way up, and for naturalised notes on the way down, would be correct.

Do I win the prize for the most unnecessarily round-about answer to a question in the history of tFB?

you win the prize... and to add...

a Perfect Cadence is a V -> I progression and was almost mandatory in classical music in the 17th to 19th centuries [not including church music which uses a IV -> I Ecclestic Cadence].
The issue was that in a minor key, V is a minor chord and so didn't sound 'final' enough, so the solution was to make V major.
But this of course does not fit with the minor scale.
The solution was to create a synthetic scale where the 7th would be raise to a major 7th in the minor scale when this chord V major was sounding; so the scale's major 7th now matches the major 3rd in chord V.
This is the harmonic minor. Sounds awesome, everyone loves it.. including me and Malmsteen... lol
It came with a new problem though.
<edited for clarity> Vocal music, especially choirs could find singing the minor 6th to major 7th interval a little awkward.
The solution was raise the minor 6th to a major 6th 
Which gave rise to the Melodic minor ascending scale.
<edited for correction> In the descending direction the natural minor is described in music theory but this is more for teaching purposes than in composition.
In composition however, where chord V is a major chord (especially in Baroque music) the harmonic minor or the melodic minor ascending must be used to ensure the the scale's 7th matches the 3rd of chord V. Which one to use would generally depend on the musical context. So it's not unusual to find the Mel Min Asc being used in the descending direction (which really does not help when trying to explain this stuff... lol)

That's all good if you are Bach and composing for choirs

If you are today and doing prog / jazz... anything goes... 
including all the modes of both harmonic and melodic minor scales...
I am proggy and I mess with this stuff often.. both in the authentic usage and the anything goes usage...

Stuckfast

I'm no music historian but that sounds a bit surprising to me. Why would the ascending interval to the seventh in the harmonic minor scale be harder to sing than any other minor third?

As I understood it, composers didn't typically think in terms of chords, or harmony, before the 18th century. Prior to that it was all about counterpoint, which implies a lot of rules around which notes can be used with which other notes, but offered a different frame of reference for thinking about them. Inasmuch as you can analyse contrapuntal music in terms of harmony I'd have thought it still used the major dominant chord in the minor key? But I expect @viz will know a lot more about this.

Clarky

Stuckfast said:

I'm no music historian but that sounds a bit surprising to me. Why would the ascending interval to the seventh in the harmonic minor scale be harder to sing than any other minor third?

As I understood it, composers didn't typically think in terms of chords, or harmony, before the 18th century. Prior to that it was all about counterpoint, which implies a lot of rules around which notes can be used with which other notes, but offered a different frame of reference for thinking about them. Inasmuch as you can analyse contrapuntal music in terms of harmony I'd have thought it still used the major dominant chord in the minor key? But I expect @viz will know a lot more about this.

minor 6th to major 7th is not so easy to pitch when singing in a choir
sounds easy don't it... and singing it in isolation is..
however, choirs back then did not sing 4 part harmony, it was 4 part counterpoint which I know is a whole different thing

from a personal experience standpoint;
I've never sang in a choir of any kind so I don't know how difficult it is
I have composed using 4 part counterpoint [both when I was at Uni cos it was part of the syllabus and in some of my own tunes cos it suited the moment].. 
I have also recorded vocals in that style [me singing / multi-tracking all 4 parts] so I know it's nothing like as easy as stacking harmonies in 3rds over the melody
Also, I don't know the quality / capabilities of the average choir that was available in the 1600's - 1700's, my studies didn't go that far. I just know what I was taught at Uni when we first started studying counterpoint, which is where my understanding comes from regarding how and why the harm and mel min scales appeared.
If there is a better / more up to date history for this that better explains the origin I'm totally open to it, cos I find this sort of thing quite interesting..

viz

Stuckfast said:

I'm no music historian but that sounds a bit surprising to me. Why would the ascending interval to the seventh in the harmonic minor scale be harder to sing than any other minor third?

As I understood it, composers didn't typically think in terms of chords, or harmony, before the 18th century. Prior to that it was all about counterpoint, which implies a lot of rules around which notes can be used with which other notes, but offered a different frame of reference for thinking about them. Inasmuch as you can analyse contrapuntal music in terms of harmony I'd have thought it still used the major dominant chord in the minor key? But I expect @viz will know a lot more about this.

Know what you mean. I expect what was hard for these ancient singer folks to get their heads round was that they were trying to jump from a minor 2nd to a major 3rd, which felt funny coz it was switching between tonalities and therefore felt weirder than doing a standard minor 3rd. Even though it was enharmonically identical. And also they did a lot of scalar melody with few jumps anyway. 

But that’s a bit of a guess. 

Clarky

viz said:

Know what you mean. I expect what was hard for these ancient singer folks to get their heads round was that they were trying to jump from a minor 2nd to a major 3rd, which felt funny coz it was switching between tonalities and therefore felt weirder than doing a standard minor 3rd. Even though it was enharmonically identical. And also they did a lot of scalar melody with few jumps anyway. 

But that’s a bit of a guess. 

another point to note is... back then (a few hundred years ago), all the rules of harmony that we know and love today were still being written..
Bach and co were pioneers

btw - I edited my comments above regarding the error you spotted.. thanks for that
I tried to add a little extra context too
As musicians and composer/songwriters it's easy to forget that music is like learning:
gymnastics: in performance
art: in creativity and expression
science: underpinned by rules, structures and methods for guidance and to provide the language to explain and define what we hear

the problem is that the science is easier to learn than the art
and when the art calls for it, the rules may be broken
all this makes learning and teaching the applied and creative aspects of music all the more difficult

Clarky

A general rule of thumb when choosing scales and modes
the main thing in general is to ensure that the notes in the scale contain intervals that are consonant with the sounding chord.
This means that the additional notes in the scale (whatever they are) will provide tonal colouration.. a 'flavour' so to speak..

so.. if the key is Am, the sounding chord is Am you could choose:
Am, A Dorian, A harm min, A mel min asc (and a bunch of others that contain the notes A, C and E)
If you are composing to be authentically Baroque or Classical your options will narrow because the style of the time dictates it
If you are composing with 20th / 21st century ears your choices widen as you're less constrained by rules...
so if it sounds awesome, it's the right choice

guitarjack66

What is the difference between the Natural Minor and the Melodic Minor scales?

viz

The natural minor has a minor 6th and 7th. 

The melodic minor has a raised 6th and 7th, which, when practised as a scale by classical dudes, is only used on the way up. On the way down, the 6th and 7th are naturalised again - so the scale is converted to natural minor (or Aeolian, if you like Greek.)

monquixote

Somewhat inspired by this conversation I decided to have a play with some modes of the harmonic minor for a track to make it a bit spicy.

This is using E Phrygian Dominant and then resolving to A Harmonic Minor for the B section. It's super fun to explore the different textures you get with weird scales.

viz

Niiiice

jackio

viz said:

Here’s the ultimate demonstration of the above. 

6 and 7 naturalised on the way up and raised on the way down, as the chords go i, bVII, bVI, V. 

https://youtu.be/Gft1W6fy22k?si=8DRnNj9rszTF7878

You look different from how I imagined. Also, love the 'not much experimental jazz in Vivaldi's time' comment, proper chuckle