The Melodic Minor Scale

The melodic minor was invented in order to give an answer to the strange sound of the harmonic minor scale.

Remember how talked in the previous page about how the leading tone of the natural minor scale was weak because it was distanced a whole tone from the root note of the natural minor scale?

In the harmonic minor scale we saw that the leading tone (the seventh note) was raised but that created a problem since the distance between the sixth note and the leading tone (In A minor for example the F and G#) was one tone and a half.
Such distance is not acceptable to the ear.

So, Then came melodic version of the minor scale and the sixth note was raised too. So if you'll play A minor in its melodic version as shown in the example above you'll notice that it is far more pleasant to the ear then A harmonic minor.

Now we have to realize that the problem of the leading tone exists only when we play the scale upwards since the effect of the leading tone takes us toward the root note.
for the reason most of the time, melodic minor is used only when ascending. When descending composers prefer to use the natural minor scale.

Here's a list of all the minor scales in the melodic version.

And here's a free printable version.

Now that we covered the major and minor scale I'd like to teach what's a diatonic scale. Click here to learn about the diatonic scale.