Melodic Minor

Which degrees are raised, and why both

Natural minor has a flat sixth and a flat seventh. Harmonic minor raises only the seventh, which produces the leading tone a minor key needs for its dominant chord — and leaves a three-semitone gap between the sixth and seventh degrees. Melodic minor raises the sixth as well, and that gap closes.

The result is a scale that walks smoothly from tonic to tonic while keeping the minor third. Nothing else in it is minor: from the fourth degree upward, A melodic minor and A major contain exactly the same notes. The whole character of the scale sits in one interval, the ♭3, holding out against six notes that lean major.

That is also the practical way to learn it. Take the major scale you already know and lower the third by a semitone. It is one change instead of two, it works in every key, and it explains the scale's sound better than counting up from natural minor does.

Ascending and descending: the classical rule

Classical practice treats melodic minor as directional. Going up, the sixth and seventh are raised. Coming down, both revert, and the descent is played as natural minor. In A: ascending A B C D E F♯ G♯ A, descending A G F E D C B A.

The reason is the one the scale is named for. The raised degrees exist to smooth a melodic line climbing toward the tonic; descending, there is nothing to climb toward, so the alterations lose their purpose and the plain minor sound returns. Exam boards and sight-reading tests still expect the scale played this way, which is why the question comes up so often.

Written music follows the principle rather than the rule. Composers raise the sixth and seventh wherever a line rises to the tonic and drop them where it does not, including mid-phrase and including on the way down when the melody turns back up. The two-form rule is a teaching simplification of that, not a law the repertoire obeys.

Jazz minor: the same scale without the rule

Jazz uses one form in both directions — raised sixth and seventh going up and coming down — and calls it the jazz minor scale. The notes are identical to ascending melodic minor; only the descending convention is dropped.

The change of habit follows a change of purpose. In classical writing the scale serves a melodic line, so its shape depends on direction. In jazz it serves a chord: minor-major seventh on the tonic, and through its modes a whole family of altered dominant sounds. A chord does not have a direction, so neither does the scale that covers it.

Worth knowing when reading two sources at once: a classical teacher and a jazz method describing melodic minor are describing the same seven notes and disagreeing only about what happens on the way down. Neither is wrong for its own repertoire.

Melodic minor on guitar

On the fingerboard the fastest route is the one that skips natural minor entirely: take a major scale shape and flatten every third. One rule, applied to patterns already under the fingers, and no three-semitone stretch anywhere — melodic minor is the most comfortable of the three minor scales to play, which is not true of harmonic minor.

Practise it in one direction only. The classical up-and-down form belongs to written melody; on guitar, running it up as melodic minor and down as natural minor mostly trains confusion. Use the jazz form for improvising and learn the descending rule separately if the repertoire calls for it.

The chord it belongs to is minor-major seventh — Am(maj7) in A — and that chord is rare enough that guitarists usually meet melodic minor through its modes instead: the altered scale over dominants, Lydian dominant over ♯11 chords. Learning the parent scale in five positions pays for all of them at once, because the modes add no new notes.

The seven modes it generates

Rotating the scale gives seven modes, and unlike the harmonic minor family, four of them are working tools rather than catalogue entries. The seventh is the altered scale, used over every altered dominant in jazz. The fourth is Lydian dominant, used over dominant chords with a raised eleventh. The sixth is Locrian ♮2, the standard choice over half-diminished chords. The third is Lydian augmented.

The remaining two — Dorian ♭2 and Mixolydian ♭6 — are known but thinly used, and searching for them turns up theory pages rather than music. That is an honest description of where they stand, and their own pages say so.

The link worth carrying: all seven share the same seven notes. A player who knows A melodic minor already knows G♯ altered, D Lydian dominant and F♯ Locrian ♮2 — the same fingering counted from a different degree. This is the single most efficient piece of theory on the instrument, because one shape covers four common chord types.

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