Modes of the Melodic Minor Scale Explained

[00:00:00]this video is sponsored by piano stick around to find out how you could win one of these keyboards you may have heard of modes before but they're typically talked about in the sense of major scale modes things like Dorian or lydian but we can have modes not just of the major scale but of other scales for example like the melodic minor scale which the a melodic minor scale would sound like this all of mode is is when we take a scale a set of notes effectively like the melodic [Applause] minor but instead of treating the current root note the a in this example as our tonic note we treat a different note in that set as the tonic note as our starting point so for example rather than using a as our tonic note here on a melodic minor we might treat the second note of the scale b as the root note of this scale and you can hear it takes on a very different mood same notes but different scale different tonic [Music] note so let's today go through the seven modes of the melodic minor scale and let's start off by talking about effectively the first mode which is the melodic minor scale itself now sometimes the melodic minor scale in this form at least is referred to as the Jazz minor scale and that's because in the classical world the melodic minor scale has a different and sort of odd Quirk to it which is that although ascending it sounds like this when you descend use different notes use the natural minor scale on the way down now to learn more about that do check out my previous video about the melodic minor scale when it's odd history in quirks but today we're just going to talk about effectively the ascending form of this scale the Jazz minor scale that's the version we use when talking about the modes of the melodic minor scale so jazzmine or ascending melodic minor that's the first mode of the melodic minor scale to get to the second mode as we demonstrated just a moment ago we now treat the second degree of the scale b as our root note and instantly we have that different flavor almost sort of scary but exotic sound to it effectively what we have here is a version of the Dorian scale B Dorian in this example but it has a flat two a lowered second degree so rather than C Shar we have C natural so we have the sort of light ethereal sound of Dorian but with the darker low second of frian so you could call the scale Dorian flat 2 or you could call it frian natural six because either way you're going to arrive at the same set of notes the only example of the Dorian flat 2 scale in practice that I could find is this tune Ayan by Jazz guitarist John scoffield in the first eight bars of this tune scoffield plays this melody using the a Dorian flat 2 [Music] scale this melody is played over this peculiar looking cord be flat major 7 Shar 5 over a which is basically a shorthand way a more intuitive way of writing a minor 6 flat 9 11 which is a chord that contains all of the main notes of Dorian flat 2 then once scoffield has introduced this melody here in a Dorian flat 2 he moves the whole thing up a minor third and gives it to us again this time in C Dorian flat 2 [Music] so that was the Dorian flat 2 scale let's talk about the next mode of the melodic minor which is the lydian augmented scale so once again we're going to take the notes of the A melodic minor and we're going to start not on the first degree not on the second degree but this time the third degree [Music] H mystical sound right so it's called the lydian augmented because it's just like the lydian scale which would be but with a sharp five and when we sharpen the five when we raise the fifth degree up we often refer to that as augmented because in an augmented Triad for example we have the fifth degree which would usually be G lifted up semitone to G Shar now finding uses of the lydian augmented scale in actual songs is very rare the only real use case of this scale is as what's called a chord scale a chord scale is an idea from Jazz where rather than applying one blanket scale over the whole song When You improvise you instead use a different scale for each individual chord that you're going to be improvising over lydian augmented is a chord scale for the chord major 7 sharp 5 the idea being that this particular scale Lan augmented will work well over that one chord now it's pretty hard to find actual examples of this in practice but one I did find was here in Herby Hancock's piano solo on Miles Davis's version of Prince of [Music] Darkness now technically here the chord isn't a major sharp five like I said before however we are getting that sharp five here in the notes that Herby hanok is playing he's effectively playing a g flat lydian augmented scale over this g flat major 7 sharp 11 chord so now let's move on to the fourth mode of the melodic minor and this one is actually quite widely used at least relatively speaking this is the lydian dominant scale so once again named after the lydian scale but not lydian augmented that was our pre previous mode this is lydian dominant so we're going to have D lydian dominant it's going to sound like [Music] that so A very famous song or at least TV tune TV theme that uses the lydian dominant scale is the The Simpsons tune The Simpsons theme [Music] tune sometimes you see the Simpson theme tune described as using just purely the lydian scale but that's a common misconception a common mistake because there is only one note difference between lydian and this scale lydian dominant lydian dominant is exactly the same as lydian however it has a lowered 7th degree and as we can see when the Simpsons theme reaches its 7th degree we get the lowered 7th degree of lydian dominant not the unaltered 7th degree of lyia another song to use lydian dominant is pretty ballerina by the Left Bank we can see the lydian raised forth here but also the lowered 7th degree here I had a date with a pretty Bina brilliant hurt my [Music] eyes would you like the opportunity to win one of these keyboards the keyboard I've been playing throughout this entire video the pianote Prima keyboard the digital piano made by pianote pianote is a fantastic online Educational Service for learning learning how to play the keyboard how to learn the piano and they have made their very own keyboard here that you can buy which is ideal for any beginner all you have to do to be in with the chance of winning a keyboard just like this is to sign up for a pianote free trial using the link Down Below in the description and not only will you be in with a chance of winning one of these keyboards if you do that but you will be directly helping the channel as well so that takes us on to the fifth mode of the melodic minor and this one might be one of the most commonly used of this set although it doesn't really have a satisfying name it still has one of those names where it says a well-known scale like mix lydian and then tells you the variation you need to make which is in this case flat six the fifth mode of the melodic minor [Music] scale is mixian flat six which as it says on the tin is a mixian scale but the sixth degree has been flattened down lowered down in this case down to C natural you can hear this scale has a sort of bright but also foreign sounding mood to it almost quite exotic right I actually made a video a full video before about song that use this particular scale so that should be a good indication to you of how common this scale is compared to the other modes in this list for example Ramin jawadi used the B mixan flastic scale for the Vara mulus theme in Game of Thrones the music associated with the mysterious Faceless Men in this theme the music literally starts by climbing up the mixian flat six scale immediately setting us into that bright yet dark tonality [Music] [Music] this mixian flat sound illustrates The Faceless Men perfectly as these are characters who ride the line between good and bad between light and dark just like the scale does the verse section of highlight by ELO is in C Mix Flat 6 what's interesting about this example is that the vocal Melody only uses the first five notes of the scale and because the first five notes of the major scale and the mixian Flat 6 scale are identical it means that the vocal Melody is effectively just using the major scale and it's in fact here the chord progression underneath that Melody that introduces the Flat 6 and flat 7 which paint us into that mixy and Flat 6 sound [Music] a similar use of the Mixel liian flat scale is Single Ladies by Beyonce just like we saw in Twilight by ELO in Single Ladies the main vocal Melody is just sticking to the first five notes of the major scale it is then the other elements of this song the other elements of the arrangement that introduce the other degrees of the scale the Flat 6 and the flat 7 Which pull us into that mixian Flat 6 sound in this Example The Flat 6 degree the C natural is introduced by the Baseline here and the flat 7 the D natural is present in this flute sample so our penultimate mode today our sixth mode of the melodic minor scale is [Applause] this a scale that you could call fshp aolon Flat five or maybe FSH aolon diminished maybe there's no obvious name for the scale sometimes people also call it loan sharp 2 or even loan sharp n nine and two in within the scale being the same degree of course but sometimes people prefer to refer to the ninth degree but either way we we have a slightly kind of awkward scale one that isn't used very much in fact I couldn't find any examples of songs using the scale if you can think of any examples then definitely do let me know in the comments down below so another name you sometimes see for this particular scale the sixth mode of the melodic minor is the half diminished scale because we can put a half diminished chord on the tonic degree that is the natural seventh chord we'll get on that number one degree that first degree of the scale a half diminished chord is effectively a minor 7 flat 5 so here we have FSH half diminished which is the same as F minor 7 with a lowered fifth degree a flat five but to me this is very much an example of an acad mic scale a scale that exists because of the structure of Music Theory it's not a scale that music musicians and composers have organically gravitated towards it's a scale that exists because of the framework of Music Theory it is there as a sort of idea but not necessarily one that is particularly useful so now we have arrived at the seventh mode of the melodic minor scale [Music] one that has a brilliant name super loan so we all know about the locrian scale which is the seventh mode of the major scale a scale that's Infamous for not actually being very usable because it's almost sort of too dark and dissonant well this is the super version of that another scale which is dark and dissonant and kind of not that usable although there is one particular use case which we'll talk about in a minute and super lockin is a good name because it is quite closely related to loan so the loan scale if we go to B now B is the easiest key to see the loan scale in you can see that in uh the key of B the loan scale was just all of the white notes and if we compared lrien to the major scale so B loan compared to B major we can see that every degree has been lowered apart from the fourth degree so what does Super loan do well super loan goes that step further that step further that loan was scared to take it lowers the fourth degree as well which in the key of [Music] B would give us that E flat [Music] there so we have an E flat serving as the fourth degree of the scale which in the key of B right is also the major thir if we talked about it as a D sharp that would be our major 3D but because we're calling it a lowered fourth degree diminished fourth it's E flat so effectively in the scale of super loan b super loan here we have both the minor third and effectively the major third [Music] so I mentioned a moment ago that there is actually one use case for this scale one sort of time that can come in quite handy which is when playing over what are called altered chords so this scale the super loan scale is sometimes referred to instead as the altered scale because it's a scale you can use over what are called altered chords an altered chord or an altered dominant chord is an idea from Jazz where a dominant chord the fifth chord of the key is altered by having its fifth either lowered or raised by semmit Tone and or having its 9th degree raised up to a sharp nine or lowered down to a flat nine I say and or because if a chord chart says G alt for example it's not specifying an exact chord instead you're meant to make your own modification to a dominant chord so how does the seventh mode of the melodic minor the so-called altered scale come into this why would we use that scale over this particular chord the altered chord well it's because in this seventh mode of the melodic minor we have all of the different notes that you might get in each variation of an altered chord it's a bit easier to see this though if I spell the notes like this instead so this is the same notes the same scale but I've swapped which n harmonics we're using which Sharps and flats we're using as I mentioned before the altered chord could contain a sharp five a flat five a sharp nine or a flat nine and all of those notes are represented along with the other notes you would get in that dominant chord so basically regardless of which altered chord you've used you can always use the altered scale over that chord so the altered scale is being used here as a chord scale like we discussed earlier in the video with lydian augmented a scale that you use over one particular chord for example if we look at Dexter Gordon's version of Blue boss we see over this G altered dominant chord he plays the G altered [Music] [Applause] [Music] scale so that's the scales of the melodic minor if you can think of any other songs that I didn't mention that use one of these scales then do mention them down below because they're quite hard to come by now I'm going to end by playing a little piano piece using one of the modes we've talked about but see if you can identify which mode it is let me know in the comments [Music] and of course if you want to be in with a chance of winning the keyboard that I've been using throughout this video the piano primary keyboard then do enter the giveaway down below by signing up for a free trial of piano today thanks very much [Music] [Applause] [Music]