Minor Scales
Lower the third and the mood turns. The natural minor is the major scale's shadow; the harmonic and melodic minors fix the one thing it lacks — a leading tone.
Builds on: 2.1 The Major Scale
The same notes, a different home
Play the white keys from A to A instead of C to C. Same seven notes, but the pattern of steps has rotated: W H W W H W W. The half steps now fall between degrees 2–3 and 5–6, and the third degree — the mediant that decides the mood — is only three semitones above the tonic instead of four. That lowered third is what the ear calls minor. This scale is the natural minor, and because it shares every note with C major, A minor is C major’s relative minor. Every major key has one, sitting three semitones below its tonic (count down: C, B, B♭, A).
The problem with the seventh
The natural minor has a flaw for harmony: its seventh degree (G in A minor) is a whole step below the tonic, so it does not lead. The dominant chord built on E would be E minor, with no pull. Composers fixed this by raising the seventh a semitone — G♯ — creating the harmonic minor: W H W W H W+H H. Now there is a leading tone and a major dominant chord, at the price of an exotic one-and-a-half-step gap between degrees 6 and 7 (F to G♯). That gap is the sound of flamenco and of much film music.
Smoothing the melody
The augmented second is awkward to sing, so melodies going up raise the sixth as well: F♯ and G♯ in A minor, giving W H W W W W H — a major scale with a minor third. Coming down, with no leading tone needed, the melody relaxes back to the natural minor. This up-and-down pair is the melodic minor. Three minor scales, then, but really one key with two notes that bend depending on where the line is going.
A minor is the relative minor of C major (same notes, different tonic). C minor is the parallel minor of C major (same tonic, three notes lowered — E♭, A♭, B♭ — and therefore a different key signature). Both relationships are used for contrast; the relative pair is far more common in classical form, the parallel pair in pop (a chorus that brightens into major).
From the major tonic, go down three semitones — or up to the sixth degree. From the minor tonic, go up three semitones to find the relative major. G major ↔ E minor, F major ↔ D minor, D major ↔ B minor.
Compare the three minors stacked on top of each other in the lab, with the raised notes lit. Then hear a major scale next to its relative and its parallel minor.
🎼 Lab — Minor Scale Comparer
Natural, harmonic and melodic minor on the same root, stacked. The raised notes are amber; the chosen scale is marked on the piano and plays up and down (the melodic minor descends as the natural minor, the way it does in real music).
- On A: natural has no accidentals; harmonic adds G♯; melodic adds F♯ on the way up.
- Play the harmonic minor and listen for the exotic gap between the 6th and 7th notes.
- Change the root to C and compare with the C major scale you built last lesson: three notes lower.
🎼 Lab — Relative & Parallel
One major key, two minors: the relative minor shares its key signature; the parallel minor shares its tonic. Hear all three.
- Pick G major, then hear E minor (same notes) and G minor (same start, darker).