Augmented chords - when to use them

viz

GuyBoden said:

viz said:

WIn a sense, yes, (and sorry about the continued hijacking) though it's far less useful - I mean it's not 'designed' to be used in a melodic (tune) sense, hence its name, harmonic (chord). It's invented for one reason only and that's to enable a minor piece to have an effective V chord, like a major piece can.

With Aeolian, the V chord is a minor triad, so it doesn't deploy the tonic's leading note. If you play in A minor, and for the V you play E minor (ie a Phrygian scale), you're playing strictly Aeolian music, like they did around the medieval period and before. The E minor doesn't point as effectively to the A minor as an E major would have done. Or to put it anotherway, the phrygian scale is not an effectivescale as a dominant. It still works (everything works coz there's no right or wrong in art!) but it's not as effective because G is not as good as G# in resolving to A. If you want a proper V, you need that major triad on E, with its G#. So they discovered and named harmonic minor to describe this effect - it's a harmonic device that gives a sharp 7 in the minor key.

Because it was designed for the major triad on the V, it says nothing about the 2nd note on that V - the 6th note in the A minor. That is assumed still to be a minor 6th, as per Aeolian. And therefore between the minor 6th and raised 7th (or between the unheard minor 2nd and raised 3rd on the V triad), you get an augmented 2 jump, which was thought to be ugly and difficult to play and sing. So hence the existence of melodic minor with its raised 6th as well. The dominant triad still sounded the same, E major, because there is no F or F# in the triad, but for the melody, when playing over the V and leading up to the I chord, you would play a major 2 as well as a major 3, and avoid the aug 2 jump. Of course when you'd resolved to the I chord you'd flip back to Aeolian, which is why melodic minor scale is played as Aeolian on the way down in classical - it only has raised 6 and 7 on the way up, as though it's on the V chord, but after resolving to the I, on the way down again, the 6th and 7th would be returned to their natural, minor, states.

I digress. So harmonic minor was designed solely for the major triad on the V, and even yngwie, if you listen carefully, only really noodles on it on that V, where it is designed for, so he's actually playng the 5th mode of it. Not harmonic minor but the 'freygish' scale. That's its main use - in fact that's why the freygish scale is also called Phrygian Dominant - and I confess I'm struggling to think of much music that uses any other of its modes.

Whereas because melodic minor is a melodic device, it's far more tuneful and thus far more prevalent in melodic soloing if not for chordal writing. Therefore it's a far richer scale to learn the modes of, as scales:

1st mode: Used often in minor melody, from the rennaisance period to today
2nd mode: combines phrygian start with dorian finish. Very lovely scale.
3rd mode: like lydian on steroids. Difficult to deploy but very spicy when you succeed.
4th mode: contains all the harmonics of a vibrating string. Used in the simpsons tune, famously.
5th mode: as explained earlier, used on the dominant of a minor key; also used a lot in Indian music as a scale in its own right; also try replacing mixolydian with it in I or IV chords. Interesting!

6th mode, half locrian. Like locrian but with a normal, not flattened, 2nd. Not particularly useful but at least it's better than locrian!
7th mode; used all over jazz on the V. An amazing scale. Every note is altered from the major scale by 1 semitone but it still works somehow!

Of course you can learn whatever you like!!!!!! Obvs. And 5th mode harmonic minor is clearly useful for shreddin' but i think you will find more application from getting melodic minor and its modes under your skin.

Fortunately, Pop/Rock doesn't always adhere to Classical Music Theory Rules, as this recent analysis shows:

http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/i-analyzed-the-chords-of-1300-popular-songs-for-patterns-this-is-what-i-found/

Absolutely, but I was specifically making the point that the harmonic minor concept was named to give a good dominant in readiness for the tonic, so if my post was related to this at all, it was about what follows the dominant, not what precedes the tonic. But nevertheless that is an interesting graph - I expect it's similar for classical music, but it would be good to find out. 

What I find interesting is that those old classical dudes weren't thick or brutish, but their music sounds confined, stilted, unemotional and less developed to many. Why didn't they invent rock and roll 400 years ago? It's fascinating to look at the progression of western music through the classical periods and see how, but more importantly, why it developed like it did. Maybe the medieval, classical, romantic and modern periods were necessary evolutionary steps on the way. Or maybe we just had to get to a certain human evolutionary state, or social state, or political state, before we could create pop, rock and jazz.

GuyBoden

When studying this type of functional harmony, I remember analysing and really listening to the Dominant and Tonic chord note movement to try and hear why it created tension/release.

To my ears, I found two main reasons for the creation of tension between the Dominant and the Tonic Chord. The movement of the notes up a 4th and the notes moving a semi tone.

Try it for yourself:

Simple Example Chords.
GDom = G B D F
CMaj7 = C E G B

These notes move a semi tone creating tension. 
B -> C
F -> E

These notes move up a 4th creating tension.
G -> C
B -> E
D -> G


With these two ideas for creating tension, moving up a 4th and semi tone movement,  I experimented with using other chords (collections of notes) that create the tension that resolves.

BMaj7 = B D# F# A#
CMaj7 = C E G B

These notes move a semi tone creating tension. 
B -> C
D# -> E
F# -> G
A# -> B

These notes move up a 4th creating tension.
B -> E
F# -> B

Edit:
So, getting back to the original poster's topic, using augmented chords:

"G aug" could be used as a tension chord before a tonic "C Major" chord.

Gaug = G B D#
CMaj7 = C E G B

These notes move a semi tone creating tension. 
B -> C
D# -> E

These notes move up a 4th creating tension.
G -> C
B -> E

viz

Yep, I've always thought of it as a pincer movement: the major 3rd of the dominant goes up a semitone to the tonic, and the 7th goes down a semitone to the mediant. So that unstable augmented 4th becomes a stable major 3rd.  

The 5th of the dominant finds itself in the middle of the tonic and the mediant and basically vanishes. The dominant itself stays where it is and becomes .... the dominant.

BigMonka

@viz I thought I knew a bit about music theory, but I've just read all this thread and my mind is officially blown - especially the history of the melodic and harmonic minor scales - I never understood the point in a scale that was different on the way up to the way down, but now I get where it's coming from!

And having just opened your mammoth spreadsheet and found that there's an Enigmatic Ionian Blues Scale, I think you've become my hero ^:)^

I presume you've had a significant formal music training?

viz

Lol thanks man. Well I have a bit, yes, but it's only really medium level. I stopped at grade 8, and I'm terribly bad at writing the stuff down succinctly, and the pieces are still slotting into place for me, very slowly. Also I know I'm guilty of over-describing it, plus I fail in relating it properly to pop, rock and jazz music, which are not my forte, so I really applaud and admire you for taking the time and wading through it all!

With melodic minor ascending and descending, it's good isn't it? You can feel it really strongly if you think of the scale as a musical tune, not just a finger exercise - when you get to the 5th note on the way up, you can almost hear the harmony underneath changing from tonic to dominant, then back to tonic again when you reach the top, and staying there as you run back down again.

Re enigmatic ionian blues, er, that's definitely a non-standard term lol - lots of those scales have no names so when I compiled them I named them according to their closest cousins

Gassage

Andy Summers attacked me with a augmented 6th once.

The Police are still trying to resolve it.

Panama_Jack666

Nice work explaining that lot @viz I'm familiar with most of it anyway but use it all so little, a recap was good!