What are Minor Scales?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about minor scales. What are minor scales? When you have a piece of music, how do you know if it’s in the major or in the minor? You’re going to learn that today! I have another video on key signatures and also on major scales, which would be very helpful for you in preparation for this video if you don’t already have a solid grasp of that.

Major scales are a series of whole steps and half steps with all whole steps, except between the
3rd & 4th and the 7th & 8th notes.

On the piano, the C major scale is obvious because it is all white keys. You have half steps between the 3rd & 4th, and the 7th & 8th notes which are E & F, and B & C which have no black keys between them. So I’m going to use C major first as an example. If you have a piece with no sharps or flats in the key signature, it may be in C major. But suppose it was in a minor key. What key would that be? How would you know it’s in a minor key if it has the same key signature?

The sixth note of the major scale is the tonic, or the root, of the minor scale.

You take that C major scale and count up to the sixth note, which is A. Play all the notes of a C major scale starting on A and you’ll end up with the A natural minor scale. So when you see a piece of music without any sharps or flats, it may be in C major, but it may be in A minor. How do you know? Well, the minor is rarely found in its natural or pure form, unless you go really far back before major/minor tonality was really entrenched in Western music, starting in the Baroque era in the 1700s. Before that, modal music was very popular in Renaissance music and such.

In post-modal music, there are two forms of the minor that are prevalent:
The harmonic minor and the melodic minor.

This is how it works. The piece might be written with no sharps or flats, but accidentals are written in the score wherever they occur. The harmonic minor has a raised seventh. The seventh note is raised by a half step. So you go back to what we started with. Go to the sixth note of the major scale. Play the minor scale, but when you get to the seventh note of that minor scale, raise it by a half step. You can hear the strength of the raised seventh propelling you up a half step to the tonic. It begs for resolution! So if you have a piece of music with no sharps or flats, and you have G sharps all over the place, it could very well be in A minor, the relative minor of C major.

Another form of the minor that’s also very common in Western music is the melodic minor.

The melodic minor has a raised sixth and seventh. However, it descends using the natural minor. So if you have a piece with no sharps or flats, you would be looking for G sharps in particular, and possibly F sharps. If there are a lot of them, and you look at the harmonies, and there are a lot of A minor chords, and the piece ends on an A minor chord, it is undoubtedly in A minor, not C major.

How does this help you with other key signatures?

If you have two sharps, you might know that two sharps would be F sharp and C sharp. Go up a half step from the C sharp. That could be D major. But if it’s in the relative minor, you go to the sixth note of that major scale, and form the relative minor. So if you have two sharps in your key signature, it might be in B minor. The B minor scale would have a raised seventh. Instead of playing A natural, the harmonic minor would have A sharp. If it was in the melodic form, it would have a raised sixth and seventh, and it would descend in the natural minor.

Any time you have a key signature, figure out the major key first.

Once you know the major key, go to the sixth note of that major scale. Play all the notes of that major scale starting from the sixth note to that same note an octave higher. When you get to the seventh note of that minor scale, raise it a half step to figure out the accidental to look for. It won’t always be a sharp. It could be a natural that would raise the note. If the seventh note was already a flat, then you would raise it a half step by making it a natural. I hope this makes sense to you! If you have questions you can address them here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube in the comments section. I will try to answer as much as I can for you and make future videos based on your questions! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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