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on Let's Suffer through the modes of melodic and harmonic minor together. Welcome to jazz guitar lessons, where we help guitarists learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Mark, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe.
All right, so this is more of a lesson podcast and this one will be sorry. You probably heard that as I turn on my chair I have guitar in hand. So it's rare. Seldom will will I use the guitar in the podcast. But this is an exception because, well, I want intermediate and investors to get a little kick in the nuts today and will be looking at the melodic minor modes from C and harmonic minor modes from C.
So meaning you all know the C major stuff, you know C major seven and going to D minor seven and E minor seven, etc. but when we start to examine melodic minor, harmonic minor, I realize in my own private teaching that there's a lot of holes in that. There's a lot of gaps in my students knowledge of the minor stuff.
So that's what I want us to do right now. So if you have the habit of listening to this podcast on the on the subway, on the bus or while driving, well, this is not for you. You want to have guitar in hand, perhaps pen and paper, because this is not a lesson for which you have a PDF.
It's just an audio lesson and you'll see you'll gain tons of perspective out of this. note before we begin, there's a book by Barry Galbraith, G.L. Brackett Galbraith Galbraith. It's volume two, and he has studies in harmonic minor and melodic minor and several, several key. So they're pieces of music pre-written in minor keys to get you used to the sound of these things, the arpeggios of chords, etc. so this is highly recommended, but it's kind of hard, you know, to dig into reading these studies.
So let's start gently today. Starting point is the big one of the big five chords that I call on the websites, or C major seven here as, which is three, five, four, five. And we'll ascend the C major scale all the diatonic chords on the same set of strings. Those are dropped to. So the minor seven bar and bar five E minor, seven F major, seven G7, A minor, seven, B minor, seven, five, five to C major, seven and back down.
Right. You can find this on the website. In fact, there's a page an exercise called the Big Five Chords. And this is the first step. So the first of the five of the big five. Now of course you probably already know that if you play. C d, e, f, g a, b, c and you start playing on D, so.
Many people would say, well you're in D Dorian. Right? This is the sound you're using and etc. for each and every note of the C major scale. So if she started the C major scale on E it's called E Phrygian.
Right. But I'm not using any other notes than the what's in C major scale. But it's what we call a mode. Now in this podcast I want to address quickly, you know, not take like half an hour of your time is still I want to address all the modes of melodic minor and harmonic minor. So let's get going.
What is melodic minor? Well, forget about that classical ascending and descending format. All we want to do in harmonic minor in this case is sorry, hold on. Technical adjustment. Haha. Closer to the mic. Like this. what we want to do is take a CD of gab. Our good old major scale and slap the e note. So all we have to do is play c, d e flat, f, g a, b, c once again c d e flat, f g a b c.
This means that we are only altering one note, but the to the major scale. So we get some melodic minor. But the consequences are really big. So we have seven new modes and seven new chords that are not all different, but somewhat different. But the texture and the sound of it is really different. So check this out C major seven chords.
So I want you to, you know, to do the legwork on this on your own to do the intellectual work. So is there an inode here C gbe yes. That's it. You know, so we take it down to a new flat. okay. So we're left with a chord. So the first chord, instead of being it's. It's called C minor major seven.
So C minor major seven. Right. This is the the James Bond chord. And so yeah that's it. So C not sorry here. That's a James five chord. So we'll get back to that. So anyways the first chord and similar minor is totally different than the major chord. So let's move on and see if the next chord is different.
So D minor seven you ask yourself does it contain an E note. No it doesn't. So it's it's remaining the same. Right. Then let's look at the next chord E minor seven. Does it contain an E note. Well the E is the root. So we cannot keep this. We need to do those. And keep the top note. The same with this.
So we get this. You may take a second to figure this one out with your fingers. So this fingering is this, big string x. Oh no no not fifth string. 69386938. All right, so this is an E-flat chord. It's an E-flat major. Seven like this with a raised two with a raised fifth. So we call it E-flat major.
Seven sharp five. Right. So back from the beginning, C minor major, seven D minor, seven E-flat major, seven. Sharp five cool. Next chord starts with an F root, so if we were in C major, we would get an F major. Seven. This guy is there, you know, in there. Yes, there is that right there on the third string.
So we want that on and we have F7. Oh good old F7 from the beginning. C minor major seven D minor, seven E-flat major, seven sharp five F7. Next chord is G7 does not contain any note. We don't even need to check next chord a minor seven. Does it contain a needle? Yes. Right here. No, no. So we get a minor seven, five, five, followed by B minor seven, five five again and back to C minor major seven.
Got all of this down now okay. So let's look at it again C minor major seven, D minor seven E-flat major seven sharp five F7. G7 A1 or seven, five, five, B minor seven, five, five, C minor, major seven and back, though you.
Start playing a major seventh there. Hey guys, just a quick note if you're enjoying this content and you're eager to boost your own jazz guitar playing, then connect with us. We've transformed the jazz skills of thousands of guitarists. You can find a link in the description or head directly over to Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net to begin your journey.
All right, let's dive back into the episode. So you see, not everything has changed, but one of the interesting characteristics of similar of minor is that there's an F7 followed by G7 side by side, and then you have a minor seven, five, five, followed by D minor seven, five, five side by side. That's quite interesting. I find. All right.
So you may we won't get into too much details now because you'll fall asleep. But you may notice that the F7, that F chord.
Is a common sound. It's F7 sharp 11. You hear this in monk telling Thelonious Monk songs a lot. And the G7 too. Is this special chord for which there is an E-flat. So it's G7 13 five, 13, flat 13. So there's a lot of little things you find in melodic minor that you're like, oh, wow, I get new sounds and things that is not diatonic.
It's not diatonic to the major scale with slight on it to melodic minor. And I think, anyways, it's my opinion in the Theory of Things that once you start analyzing things, you realize is it from the major scale, melodic minor scale or harmonic minor scale, and it constitutes 99% of all the songs we know? never mind trying to play, you know, major seven sharp five just for no reason.
Say, oh, major, seven sharp five is here is in melodic minor. Right. So it relates to something we already know. So now, before I let you go, let's do the exact same process in the key of C harmonic minor. What is harmonic minor. Well we start with C major.
And we flat the E and we flat the a.
So basically it's two notes away from the major scale and it's one note away from melodic minor. So c, d, e flat f g A, flat B and C and back down.
Cool. Let's go through all the chords but quickly this time, because now you know, what you have to look at is I know all my C major chords. Is there an E in the chords? Yes. Change it to an E-flat. Is there an A in the chord? Yes. Change it to an E. If neither of these notes are present and believe me, they will be present everywhere.
you. All you have to do is just keep the same chord from C major. All right? So C major seven becomes C minor. Major seven again D minor seven become D minor. Some sort of C major seven C minor major seven to D minor 755. Third chord is still that E-flat. E-flat major seven sharp five. Next chord is F minor, seven.
Because of that, A-flat is right on top. Next chord is G7. We need a G7. We need a five for it to be a dominant in any key. That's just a thing to A-flat. Now, it's not a anymore. It's A-flat major, seventh pure, major sevenths, beautiful. And the D chord. Well, guess what? It used to be minus five.
Now it is fully diminished. Diminished seventh and back to C minor, major seven and back down.
The so. And there's such a pretty thing in harmonic minor I can't put my finger on it, but it's really nice. Especially this part.
Has F minor seven G to A flat major seven. All right. So let's go back to the beginning and restate these chords. Maybe take pen and paper. Practice them and you'll see where we're going. So C minor major seven D minor 755 E-flat major seven sharp five, F minor seven G7. A-flat major seventh.
B diminished seventh.
And similar major seventh. Cool and back up.
Cool. Now, if you want to use a shortcut to play on D minor, some flat five to G7, the C minor, you know what you do? You do this.
Use C harmonic minor all the way so it gives.
And it gives all these pretty pretty notes and all these of. Or whatever. You know there's all these things in melodic minor. Harmonic minor. It is so beautiful. It's so natural. But unfortunately we only have about I don't know, 15, 20, 25% of songs that are in minor key. So we can study them less than we should. So that's it for this podcast.
Number 31. I hope this helps. Of course. Feel free to send me your questions by email or to comment on this podcast. Share the word. Of course, if you like it with your friends on social media. So once again, I'm Mark from Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net. Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher and I'll see you in the next podcast.
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