MINOR THREAT
THE MELODIC MINOR EXPLORED
Phil Mann is a stage and session star and educator extraordinaire. Get ready to step up your bass game!
Hello again! Being able to understand and utilize harmonization is a critical component of every musician’s ongoing development. Harmonization is the process of producing a different chord on each diatonic step of a parent scale. These structures are then placed in a sequential order to produce a progression. Once this is familiar to you, you’ll be able to analyze chord progressions and assign suitable melodic vocabulary to them. Whether this process is used to produce an impromptu bass fill, or the development of a virtuoso solo, the method is the same; if you know how the harmonies work, then you know the right notes!
Let’s look at minor tonality, not to be confused with the minor scales found in major harmony—Dorian, Phrygian, and so on. Although there is a crossover, the latter is a different subject area. Within the confines of minor tonality, you’ll often hear titles such as ‘harmonic minor’, ‘melodic minor’, and ‘natural minor’, so what we need here is a little law and order and some real-life insights to help us make head and tail of all this jargon.