To cut to the chase... banning the major scale modes for now, I'm interested in famous (not obscure!) songs you know which use melodic or harmonic minor modes.
I remember at one point doing some flamenco and reading up on a load of jazz and getting the melodic and harmonic minor down... promptly to forget them (lots of remembering!) and stick to major modes for pop/rock and acoustic fingerstyle. I don't think I'm huge on the melodic minor sound, and harmonic minor is cool but only for a little while, and obviously handy for the V7 to Iminor.
To me, learning a scale is exactly the same as learning its modes. You learn the scale over the whole fretboard, then you know it and its modes. But it's a lot of work if you're not a pro musician to remember all that (plus the main scale might sound ok but its modes may be useless, so it's almost wasted effort) so I want to narrow it to what I'll use in practice. Hence wondering what famous songs have used which modes of these scales... to get a feel for them some more.
YouTube "melodic minor modes," for example, and there's not much (e.g. nobody much does a pedal note and plays the different modes over to see what they sound like). You do it yourself but it's still good to just sit back and listen.
Anyway - I'm just checking out some SONGS now which use this stuff but will be good for folk to point out any super famous stuff...
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If you're playing the blues using mixed major and minor pentatonics its the effectively the Dorian mode (with an added major third). On the 5 chord you can add the 3rd of the 5 chord which is the major 7th of the Dorian mode for the key. Playing a major 7th of the Dorian mode turns it into the melodic minor scale - well it's one way of looking at it
I love that bit in SCOM - used sparingly, harmonic minor can sound awesome. It just "turns" the ear, or whatever the expression is.
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The Simpsons is the acoustic scale (4th mode of melodic minor) Drunken sailor, greensleeves are Dorian. All major rock is mixolydian. All minor nwobhm is aeolian (eg 90% of Iron Maiden with its em-D-C progressions). Flying in a blue dream is Lydian. Um, white rabbit is phrygian. There's loads of aeolian (black magic woman) Nothing is locrian apart from a prokoviev piece. Locrian is almost always just V scale (mixolydian) in the 3rd inversion, ie starting on the 7th note of the major scale. There's a satch song in the Enigmatic scale. There's quite a lot of eastern music using the 5th mode of melodic minor as the root scale (hence its alternative name of Hindu scale).
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Thanks for those!
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Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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Edit: Something removed and is this thread limited to Harmonic and Melodic Minor?
D Mixolydian
A lot of Flamenco is based around Phrygian scales. E Phygian for a Solea and so on.
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Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
By the way this whole "raised ascending, flattened descending" has been so misunderstood, or at least misquoted; it should be said as "raised on the V, flattened on all the other chords"; and it's just that the scale as it is practised is there to demonstrate that V-i resolution, and it happens to do it at the top of the scale. It's not meant to imply a rigid mantra of raised ascending, naturalised descending. You could even practise the melodic minor scale the other way around - it'd be a bit odd but not impossible. You'd be implying a V for the first 4 notes, then a i for the top four, then a V again for the first 4 downward notes, and a i for the last 4. The normal way is more straightforward, albeit it has led to this issue.
PS - @bigjon I knew you were good at the piano, but to busk that! - you get a wow.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
My YouTube Channel
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.