>Step by step

Writing with minor scales

1 To start off, here’s the A natural minor scale. I’ve used this scale to illustrate because it’s made from all the white notes on the piano keyboard, played from A to A. It’s the pattern of intervals between the notes that make it a natural minor scale – repeating this pattern from any starting note will produce a natural minor scale based on that note.

2 To harmonise a scale – which basically means to produce a set of chords from it using the notes it contains – you just stack up alternate notes from the scale onto each note in the scale to build threenote chords, or ‘diatonic triads’. Here are the diatonic triads for the key of A minor, shown after the scale itself.

3 The second type of minor scale is the harmonic minor scale, which is the same as the natural minor scale, but with the seventh note, or degree, of the scale raised in pitch by a semitone. This came about because composers wanted the V, or dominant chord in a minor key, to be a major chord instead of the minor V chord in the natural minor scale.

4 If we now harmonise the harmonic minor scale in the same way as we did the natural minor scale, we can see that raised seventh degree gives us a different set of diatonic triads. The III chord has gone from a major chord to an augmented chord, the V chord has gone from minor to major, and the VII chord has gone from major to diminished.

5 If we now merge these two sets of diatonic minor scale chords, we get a palette of ten chords altogether. These should all work with a melody that’s in the parent key – in other words, one that uses notes from the scale we’re using – A minor in this case.

6 Let’s look at a basic i > iv > v progression in A minor, using the natural minor scale as the base of our chords. This would translate as Am > Dm > Em, since the i, iv, and v chords are all minor in this key when based on the natural minor scale. Next, we’ll find a melody to go over this progression, using the notes from the A minor natural scale.

7 Here I’ve placed this i > iv > v progression into a simple song segment consisting of drums and a piano part playing the chords. I’ve added a synth lead playing a melody over the top that only uses notes taken from the A natural minor scale, namely A, G, F, E, D, E, F, E, D, E, G, and A.

8 We can change things up while keeping in the same key of A minor, by basing things on the harmonic minor. The raised seventh doesn’t have any effect on the i and iv chords – Am (A, C, E) and Dm (D, F, A) – since the seventh, G, doesn’t appear in those chords. The v chord of Em (B, E, G), however, becomes an E major G#). chord (B, E,

9 If we now add in our synth melody and raise the G note towards the end of G# bars 2 and 4 to a to fit the new underlying E major chord, the vibe changes. We’re still in a minor key, we just have the option of using either minor scale to base our tonality on. Note that in the range of diatonic chords in a minor key, four of them are major chords!

10 As another illustration of this, my last example features a section of a track in the key of C minor. The chord progression takes the form of i > III > VII > Eb Bb VI, which in C minor equates to Cm > > Ab. > Although three out of the four chords are major triads, it’s still a minor progression because all of the chords are diatonic to the key of C minor.

11 So how would we go about writing a synth hook or melody over these chords, you ask? Easy! Just take the notes from the C minor scale and use those to construct your melody. The chords in this particular example all happen to be diatonic to the harmonised C natural minor scale, which contains the notes C, D, Eb, Ab Bb. F, G, and

12 So, with that in mind, I’ve inserted a simple bell synth melody over the first half of the progression made up of the Bb, Ab, Eb, notes G, C, G, F and G. You can use any other combination you can think of, but the key is to stick with the notes from the scale and just play around with them – eventually something will stick.