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Lesson 8: Improvisation 3 - Minor scale

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There are two scores as a set for lesson 8.

Score shows the improvisation in Minor scale and the Minor scale itself .
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Scores for Lesson 8

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Lesson 8: You are getting into the new CONCEPT

<Confirmation>
Have you tried to play Score 7? Have you tried to create your own passage through black keys? If you feel like it, you would send it to me attached to email (tokyoblue@infoseek.jp)

<How you integrate Black keys to your improvisation. Step 2>
Today, I am going to tell you a little bit of professional way of improvisation. We have been with C major all the way till the last lesson.

I told you that the Tonic of C major, that is the prime note for C major key is C. Remember, I told you? The tonic note is the name that is assigned to a certain key. If I say it the other way around, whenever you designate a certain key, you call out the tonic note. Thereby, a scale that has tonic note of C is designated as the KEY C.

Now,
There is other Key than C major that has C as the tonic. Yes, you guessed right. It is C minor key.

The major keys have merry, joyful, and pleasing atmosphere of melody. On the other hand, minor has dark, depressing and sad atmosphere of melody.

Why do we hear that way? It's mostly come from what we have been listening since our first day on earth. We have been conditioned to feel that way.

Yes, if we have been listening minor melody as the BGM of wedding ceremony, we would feel joy and expectation whenever we hear the minor melody.

Now, as you have guessed or if you remember what you have learned in your school, everyone of 12 keys can be the tonic. (12 keys are 7 white keys plus 5 black keys)

And each and everyone of the tonics has its own scale defined. Further each of the tonic can be the tonic of major as well as minor scale.

So, taking tonic C as an example, there are C major scale that I have played and C minor scale that I am going to play today.

So the point is, if you bring in those additional scales to your melody line, you will double the flow of melody for your improvisation. Isn't it great? I will focus on C major and C minor so that you can learn by yourself further having handy reference with you.

+++++++

Here's the scale: C major goes through all white keys. (Watch Video)
C minor has to be a bit different to have sad atmosphere built in it. To do that, you make the third and sixth note from the tonic to be half tone lower. (Watch video)
Do you hear the sad atmosphere?

Why is the third and sixth? Thing is how you feel when you hear a scale. At first there was no definite way to say if a tune is minor or major. But one day and the days after that, a person living alone since the loss of his better half found that singing half note lower on the third and sixth sound pretty nicely fit to own mentality. The mentality was the sadness, if expressed by modern language.

A few century later, arrogant person came forward saying that the scale is to be called minor and ever since everybody acknowledge that the minor scale represents sadness with such and such note characteristics that I have described above.

Well I am joking half way. But if it is not true it won't be too far apart from the truth, who knows. But you understand my point, right? Minor melody has sadness in it.

There are two scales assigned to each minor key. One is the scale to be used when you are going up the scale and the other is to be used when you are coming down the scale.

Why is that? Don't ask me. It is of natural thing and you'll get accustomed to it sooner or later. See, the music isn't the logic. The musical theory came after the music, remember?
So, you have to swallow it here and forever.

Now having those three scales, your improvisation expands at great extent.

Check those scales at below score.
C major, Note there is no change whether you are going up or coming down with major scale.
C minor going up
C minor coming down.

As usual, the better to your ear, the better improvisation you played.

<Sharpen up your sense of improvisation. Try to integrate the tones that are in minor scale into major scale>
How those thing affect to improvisation? I show you that on the score 8 where melody line is changed to minor during first 6 bars. Then it comes back to C major at the later 6 bars.

Yes, this is one of the improvisation using minor scale in major melody.

<Assignment>
Try to build minor scale into the original melody.
First, into the scale going up.
Second, into the scale coming down.

Listen closely to your own integration and judge if you like it. Then let your family be critic for your improvisation.

<Additional Note>
As the guide line, I have attached Score 8. The melody line of first 6 bars has been changed to C minor. Then the melody line comes back to major at later 6 bars. But to show you how casual this can be, I inserted minor scale in 10th bar. There you see "Ab" in a row where "A" should be if you play the 10th bar in major scale.

Note: If you assign "b" or "#" to a certain note, that is effective to all notes at same position in the bar. Check the note "A" in the second bar. It is designated to be "b"(read as "FLAT". You use black key here) at the first "A". Then the second note of "A" should be read as having "b" attached. You play two "Ab"(read as "A flat") in a row in this bar. Same thing is said to "E" of next bar. You read as you see two "Eb" continue.

I will talk about chord progression on this case at lesson 10.