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View Full Version : What's up with the melodic minor scale?

miku
06-13-2005, 06:16 PM
Does anyone know the official reason why the standard melodic minor scale becomes a regular *** natural minor scale when it's descending? What the hell, lol. Why not just have it b3 natural 6 natural 7 both up AND down, and call b3 b6 b7 natural minor like we normally do?

I don't see any valid reasoning for why we do this, so I was wondering if there is one. Cause it really just seems to me like some arbitrary reasonless thing that somehow came to be, and nobody feels like changing it now that it's become standard.
miku
06-15-2005, 09:51 PM
So nobody knows?
SRVFan2005
06-15-2005, 10:13 PM
That concept was hard for me to grasp as well.

It's just the way it works I guess. Like for A Melodic Minor would be ABCDEF#G#A so down would be ABCDEFGA. I really can only guess that it's to make it easier to remember when building, I sometimes forget though.
miku
06-15-2005, 10:32 PM
I understand fully how it works / is set up. What bothers me is there seems to be no valid reasoning for why it's that way.

Unless you've just heard the melodic minor scale up and down as usual many times and are used to it, I think most people would agree it sounds MORE natural if it DOESN'T change to natural minor upon descent. (Some people say it's set up that way to sound more natural.)
gaslight
06-16-2005, 10:39 AM
The Classical Melodic Minor scale is different ascending and descending because of some cryptic reason that they came up with in the days of classical theory.

The Jazz Melodic Minor descends the way it ascends, pretty much because jazz cats liked it better that way.
thepurpleone
06-16-2005, 05:14 PM
The reason I think is..just..coz. They are different is because melodies in a minor key tend to use the sharpened 6th and 7th degrees when they are ascending, and the unsharpened when descending, although no piece is ever played in just a melodic minor key it could contain notes from both the melodic and harmonic minor scales so it's just in a minor key as apposed to in a melodic/harmonic minor key. T'is just the rules I guess no obvious reason that I can see... :confused: