Harmonic Minor Modes

Dr. Bob Lawrence  0:32  
Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play. Jazz Piano. Man, it has been a busy a busy month, we've been hanging out with the primary and ultrasounds for B. We've explored Dizzy Gillespie's groove in high. And last week, we had some fun dissecting, looking at Chet Baker solo on tangerine. And if that's not enough, today, we're going to tackle harmonic minor modes. Wow, what a month. If you've been faithfully, faithfully tackling the various patterns that we've been using since the start of the year, to improve your hand mobility, for improvising, you are fully aware of the intensity, the perseverance and the determination that is needed to stick with the program, right, not only for the month of August, but for the entire year. So I always like to I typically like to extend the time that you have with these exercises, by taking a week to interview a special guest or to present a lecture, right so today, I thought I would do just that. give you all some more time to deal with Dizzy Gillespie's groovin Hi, Chet Baker's tangerine, and of course the the exercises for the primary and altered sounds for B. Right. Wow. So today I'm presenting another lecture for the jazz piano skills lecture series on harmonic minor modes. Now, of course, you knew this was coming, right because last month I gave a talk on the melodic minor modes. I mentioned that that time, if we had to pick one topic that is the most poorly taught in all of jazz education, my vote would be most and because it is so poorly taught, it creates an enormous amount of confusion, frustration misapplication stress and just flat out musical chaos. So today, I thought I would devote a podcast episode to the harmonic minor modes to complement the talk that I gave last month. With regards to the melodic minor modes. My hope is that you gain a properly ordered understanding of modes which in turn will lead you to a functional application of the modes. So today you are going to discover the harmonic minor modes, you're going to learn how to properly study and apply the harmonic minor modes and you are going to play the various sounds created by the harmonic minor modes. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner and intermediate player, an advanced player or even if you are a seasoned and experienced professional, you're gonna find this jazz piano skills podcast lesson exploring the harmonic minor modes to be very beneficial. But before we dig in, I want to as I always do welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills and if you are indeed a new listener to the jazz piano skills podcast. If you're new to jazz panel scales, I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. There are various membership plans to choose from. So when you have a free moment, check out jazz panel skills.com To learn more about the various membership plans and all of their perks. Now there are educational weekly podcast packets, which consists of the illustrations the lead sheets into play longs for every weekly podcast episode. There's an online sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses. There's an online weekly masterclass and an in an online interactive Fakebook. On top of that, we have a private jazz panel skills community that is growing daily, and hosts a variety of engaging forums, which you would absolutely love. And on top of all that, we have unlimited, private, personal and professional educational support. All these perks are waiting for you wanting to help you discover learn and play jazz piano. So again, when you have a free moment, check out jazz piano skills.com and become a member of Once you get there, if you have any questions regarding the various membership plans, please do not hesitate to contact me reach out to me, I am happy to spend some time with you, and answer any questions that you may have. Okay, let's discover, learn and play jazz piano let's discover, learn and play the harmonic minor modes. Okay, I talked about this last month when discussing the melodic minor modes that in order to get a proper understanding of the modes, especially the melodic and harmonic minor modes, we need to spend just a little bit of time discussing the major modes. And to get a proper understanding of the major modes, we need to spend a little time discussing modes generically. What are they? Why are they important? So let's begin with what are they, in short, modes are an academic explanation of the origin of pure an altered musical sounds, which are major dominant minor have diminished and diminished. So I want to say that again, because I want to stress that again, if you if you walk away with only one thing in this podcast episode, this is it. That modes are an academic explanation of the origin of pure and altered musical sounds. And of course, we know we have five primary sounds major dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished. Why is it important to know the origin of a musical sound? Well, quite simply, because you want to rest assured that you are spending your time studying and practicing valid material, valid information, valid sounds, you want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt about the significance, the importance and validity of any skill that you are practicing within the landscape of jazz. In other words, you want to study and practice real and authentic skills. You want to study and practice real musical sound. So let's be honest, how many of you have spent time practicing information practicing data with absolutely no idea as to its origin? Where it comes from? If it's legit, so important? In other words, should you really be devoting time energy and effort to studying and practicing the information that you're studying and practicing? Blindly studying and practicing information because somebody told you to do so is really not a good strategy. And I must say, the qualifications of the individual dishing out the information is totally 100%. Irrelevant. I mentioned this last month as well. Their playing experience, their accolades, and or academic achievements are quite honestly irrelevant. In fact, I know plenty of folks, I mentioned this, I know plenty of folks with Grammys and academic degrees that are awful teachers. And, you know, ironically, the best teacher I ever had. When it comes to jazz piano, the best very best teacher I ever had never even graduated from high school. So what makes a great teacher? Great teachers always substantiate the what, why and how behind the skills they asked you to study in practice. I want to say that again as well. Great teachers always substantiate the What the Why, and the how behind the skills they asked you to study and practice. If they don't do that, or if they cannot do that. It is a huge red flag. telling you to find a new teacher bottom line and I know you get this time is precious and you do not want to waste time practicing wrong things or practicing right things the wrong way right either either scenario ends up taking you nowhere, both scenarios are horrible. So, today as I did last month with melodic minor modes today with the harmonic minor modes,

Dr. Bob Lawrence  10:34  
I will attempt to provide you with a concise, thorough explanation and presentation of the what, why and how of mode study of harmonic modes study. Okay, so back to modes being an academic explanation of the origin of pure and altered musical sounds, again major dominant minor, half diminished and diminished. Let's think about this for a minute. Jazz is the study of shapes, and sounds. Shapes can be harmonic shapes can be melodic. Regardless of their form harmonic or melodic, there, they always produce a sound, major dominant minor have diminished or diminished. Modes explain the origin of musical sound, thus validating its authenticity. Again, we want to study and practice authentic jazz sounds. And how do we know a sound is authentic? I'll give you one word answer modes. Now, with all of this being said, modes help us organize musical sounds in a couple of different ways. Pure sounds, altered sounds. Right sounds are either pure, or they're altered. Another way modes help us organize sound is by type, right, all of our major sounds or minor sounds dominant, half diminished and diminished, right grouping those sounds, in other words, by sound type. So we have pure, unaltered sounds. And we have sound types. So we can take our three scales or major scales, our harmonic minor scales or melodic minor scales. And we can look at those scales and see where our pure sounds come from. We can look at those scales and see and identify where the altered sounds come from. And then we can take the sounds, whether they're pure altered from the major scales, harmonic and melodic minor scales, and group them by type. Right, it's a fascinating study. And it's liberating and that you can begin getting, you're getting a handle on the various sounds of jazz, pure and altered, and the various sound types by studying those three scales, the major scales, the harmonic, minor scales, and the melodic minor scales. So before we begin our, our study or exploration of the harmonic minor modes, I want to I want to just talk about the major modes for a moment. If we look at a major scale, and we look at the seven chords that are produced by the major scale, right, there's seven notes in a scale. And each one of those notes produce a chord or a sound, right or a type of sound. So if you've been studying jazz for a little bit, you've probably are familiar with the fact that the major scale all major scales produce seven chords with the first chord being a major chord, the second chord being a minor, the third chord being a minor, the fourth chord being a major fifth chord being dominant sixth chord being minor in the seventh chord being half diminished. So if I were to play these chords in relationship to the C major scale there's our seven notes of the scale. Taking every other note of the scale, I can produce the seven chords. C major, D minor, In E minor, F major, G dominant, a minor and B half diminished. This sequence is 100% the same, regardless of what major scale you're looking at. So we can say with full confidence that the one chord and the four quarter are always going to be major chords. The two chord, the three chord and the sixth chord are going to be minor chords. A five chord always dominant, and the seventh chord have diminished. This is the way it is if we live in a theoretically correct musical world, right? I had a teacher I always used to say to him are all two chords minor? Yes, he would say. I said, really? The five chord is always dominant. Yes. The four chords always major Yes. And then you would always end for now. For now, and I think that's really important, right? And the four now is really important, because when you study scales, and you study modes and the sounds that are being produced by the scale or the modes, we want to keep things clean, we want to keep things tidy, right? We want it nice, clean and tidy, before we start looking at exceptions, right? In other words, we have to know the norms before we can make sense of any exceptions. Okay. So one thing that is really important to point out about the court produced by the major scale, and that is, all of those sounds that I just played for you from the C, C major scale, C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G dominant, a minor, B half diminished. If you notice, those are all pure sounds. In other words, you didn't hear me say call any of those sounds with any kind of fancy shmancy label right there. You didn't hear anything about flat nines or sharp nine, so sharp elevens, flat Thirteen's. You didn't, they're not there. Yet, they're simply not there. So as I always like to say the major scale produces pure sounds. So if the major scale produces only pure sounds, then the question must be asked, well, then, where do the altered sounds come from? The altered sounds come from you got it. The minor scales, the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale. This is where we find the scales or where we find our altered sounds. This is a big deal, right? This is a big shouldn't be a big revelation for you, in that you realize that these altered sounds are coming from a very specific in a very certain place, called the harmonic minor and melodic minor scales. I, for the longest time, used to think that musicians were making up the sounds, because certainly they were not found in the major scales. And I only knew my major scales at that time. So I didn't know where the sounds were coming from that I was hearing musicians play. I was, I assumed that these were the invention of the musician playing them. So in other words, I was I was given musicians, a whole lot of credit. Right. You know, I remember hearing an interview. This was years ago, with the great Igor Stravinsky, Russian composer. And the gentleman interviewing Mr. Schrute. Stravinsky asked him, What does it feel like to create music? And Stravinsky responded? Well, I don't know. I think you should ask the Creator. And I thought that was a fabulous answer, because he, on many levels, it's a fabulous answer. But the fact that he was acknowledging that, oh, he went on to say that I simply take what's there, and I rearrange it. In other words, he was acknowledging that these sounds, these pure sounds and these altered sounds and these types of sounds like major dominant minor, half diminished and diminished, are produced by our tuning system. They're already there. He didn't create them. Right, the tuning system produces those sounds. And that was an eye opener for me as well because I realized then that wait a minute,

Dr. Bob Lawrence  20:12  
the musician is not producing the sounds, the sounds are coming from the tuning system the sounds are coming from our major scales are our melodic minor scales or harmonic minor scales. And this is very important to know and it validates, then why you're gonna want to spend time studying and practicing and playing your scales, your major scales, harmonic minor scales and melodic minor scales. Okay, so before going any further, before we dig into the harmonic minor modes, I want you to hit the pause button, take a few minutes right now to download and print your podcast packets. I don't usually put together packets for the lecture series, but for today, I did did it last month with melodic minor modes. And again, I did it for today and our discussion of the harmonic minor modes. So I want this information in your hands. So if you are a jazz piano skills ensemble member, your membership grants you access to all of the educational podcast packets, the illustrations the lead sheets in the play alongs. For every weekly podcast episode, I mentioned that every week, you should use these podcast packets when listening to this episode. And of course, you should be using them when practicing. So if you're listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories such as Apple or Google, Amazon, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, the list goes on and on. Then be sure to go to jazz piano skills podcast dot.com Go directly to jazz piano skills podcast.com To download your podcast packets, and you will find the download links the active download links in the show notes. And one final but very significant message that I include in every podcast episode. If you are sitting here listening and thinking that the various harmonic minor modes that we are about to discover, learn play or over your head, then so what right big deal, who cares right there over your head. So just sit back, relax and listen, continue to listen and grow your jazz piano skills intellectually by doing just that by just listening to this podcast episode. Every new skill right is over our heads when first introduced, but this is how we get better than we place ourselves. We make ourselves uncomfortable, right by just placing ourselves smack dab in the middle of conversations where we're hearing things that we have no idea what the heck we're hearing, right. But this is how this is how we do it. This is how we grow intellectually and I say it all the time all musical growth begins upstairs mentally before it can come out downstairs physically in your hands. So I want you to just sit back, relax, no worries, I want you to sit back listen to this podcast. Listen now to discover and learn the play as it always always does, they will come in time I guarantee it. Okay, now that you have your podcast packets in front of you, I want you to grab lead sheet one skill one, which deals with the C harmonic minor scale and its modes plus grab illustration one which deals with all of the altered C sounds produced by the harmonic minor scales. So when you have both leaves sheet one and illustration one side by side you have a scale perspective modes and a sound perspective chords placed next to each other. It's a great way to dive deeper into these modes. But let's look at lead sheet one first the scale perspective. Okay. So just as with the the major scale, we have seven notes that produce the major scale we have seven notes that produce the harmonic minor scale. And the easiest way to think of the harmonic minor scale is to start with the major scale and now simply flat the third and flat the sixth of the major scale. So we have a C, D, E flat, A flat again that sound is

Dr. Bob Lawrence  24:36  
last month I said with the melodic minor scale, think of the major scale and flat the third. That's it so the melodic minor scale your flat the third of the major scale to produce it the harmonic minor scale, your flat the third and flat the sixth of the major scale to produce it. So the very first sound of the harmonic minor scale As was the case with the melodic I mean of the harmonic minor scale, as was the case with the melodic minor scale, we get this kind of hybrid sound, this minor major seventh sound. So we have a C, we take every other note, we take C, E flat, G, we have a B natural on top. So we have this minor major sound. Okay, it's up, same sound produced by the first mode of the melodic minor scale, it's the same sound produced by the first mode of the harmonic minor scale. Alright, the second mode, if we start on the note, D, and I play that mode, D flat, A flat. If I take every other note, you're gonna see that I have a D, F, A flat, and I'm familiar with that. It's a D half diminished sound. But we have that E flat in there. Such a great sound, we're used to hearing that half the many sound at minor seven flat five sound from the harmonic minor scale being used with our minor 251 progression, minor 251. I'll talk about that a little bit more when we get to the five chord. So okay, mode one produces our minor major seven sound mode two, we find our half diminished sound that that is often used with the minor 251 relationship. If we take a look at mode three, we start on our E flat and we have an E flat, G, A, B natural, and a D. So it's producing an E flat major sharp five sound.

Unknown Speaker  27:13  
I like it, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  27:17  
You know, sharp five major, the augmented sound is common. And so here's a great mode to use with it. When you find yourself in that situation, the fourth mode of the harmonic minor scale, if we start on the note F and play our scale

Dr. Bob Lawrence  27:41  
we have every other note being an F, A flat, C flat, we're very familiar with that chord or that sound that's an F minor seven. Okay, so so far, the first four modes, we have a minor major seven, we have a half diminished sound, we have an altered major sound, E flat major seven sharp five, and we have a F minor seven sound with the with the fourth mode of the harmonic minor scale. Now the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale starting on the note G produces this beautiful flat nine flat 13 sound, dominant flat nine flat 13. Here it is again. So we have the A flat, which of course is our flat nine, we have the E flat which is the flat 13. Now if we put this with the second mode, the D half diminished, we have our minor two five. Going into that dominant resolving to minor it's beautiful. It's one of my absolute favorite modes this half diminished for the harmonic minor scale going to the flat nine flat 13 dominant resolving to the minor I use it all the time when playing minor two five ones. So listen again

Dr. Bob Lawrence  29:28  
it's beautiful. So I would strongly encourage you to mess around with the second mode of the harmonic minor scale along with the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale to really begin getting a minor 251 progression under your under your fingers. Now, if we look at the sixth mode of the harmonic minor scale starting on that a flat we get this

Dr. Bob Lawrence  30:00  
So, we have an A flat major, A flat, C, E flat, G, but we have a D natural in there because of the mode. So it's kind of like a flat major sharp 11 sound, which I love the major sharp 11 sound, I use it often for effect in my plane. And this is a great mode to, to, to incorporate the sharp 11 sound into your plane. Okay, again, the sixth mode of the harmonic minor scale. Now the seventh mode, the seventh mode, we discover for the very first time, the diminished sound. So you'll see there the B diminished, if you're looking at your lead sheet skill, one, the beat of any sound, so you get this we get our B diminished.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  31:06  
Fits like a glove, right? So again, I'm, I'm playing all these modes off of your lead sheet packet. If you're a jazz piano skills member, you have your lead sheet packet, hopefully in front of you. And I'm just playing right down that lead sheet one and course you have 12 lead sheets in that packet, you have the modes laid out for all 12 harmonic minor, all 12 harmonic minor scales. So going back to the seven mode here for a moment, right, the major scale if you remember, when I was talking about that earlier that the one in the four chord are major sounds, the two, three and six are minor sounds, five is dominant and seven has half diminished. Nowhere in there nowhere in there in the major scale, do we find the diminished sound. So just like the altered sounds, are derived from the harmonic and melodic minor scales, the harmonic minor scale produces the diminished sound that we have. So that seventh mode is very important, I use that all the time that scale, I love that sound on the diminished chord. I know there are symmetrical scales that jazz musicians love to play with the diminish sound like the whole half diminished scale, which is great, but I I find myself playing the seventh mode of the harmonic minor scale quite often. So let's quite often when playing diminished when playing diminished chords. So let's review our harmonic minor modes here again real quick. So again, lead sheet one, skill one, mode one, minor, major seven, mode two half diminished. mode, three major sharp five, mode for F minor, or minor, I should say, a mode of five dominant flat nine flat 13 mode six major sharp 11 and mode seven, fully diminished. Wow, that's fantastic, the harmonic minor modes. So now what I'd like to do is just kind of do a recap of the modes modes of the major scale modes of the harmonic minor modes of the melodic minor. And so I want you to grab a piece of paper, which grab a pencil and make note of this. So the major sounds major sounds there are two major sounds found in the major scale, there are two major sounds found in the harmonic minor. And there is one major sound found in the melodic minor. For the dominant, we have one dominant sound found in the major scale, we have one dominant sound found in the harmonic minor scale which is the flat nine flat 13. And we have three dominant sounds found in the melodic minor scale, which would be the sharp 11, the flat 13. And in the fully altered dominant with the flat nine sharp nine, flat five sharp five. With regards to the minor sound, three minor, A minor sounds are found in the major scale, two in the harmonic minor and two in the melodic minor. Alright, now keep in mind, one of those in harmonic and melodic minor is that hybrid that minor major seventh sound. The half the many sound we have one half to many sound produced by the major scale, one produced by the harmonic minor scale and one produced by the melodic minor scale and the diminished sound. We have zero diminished sounds produced by the major scale one diminished sound produced By the harmonic minor scale, and zero diminished sounds produced by the melodic minor scale. So that's a nice little chart right so it comes down to that we have five major sounds produced between all three scales major harmonic minor, melodic minor, we have five dominant sounds produced by all three scales, the major harmonic, minor melodic minor scales, we have seven minor sounds produced by the major harmonic, minor and melodic minor scales, we have three half diminished sounds that are produced by the major scale harmonic minor scale melodic minor scale, here we have one diminished sound produced by the harmonic minor scale only. That's it. That is it. So one thing that I would encourage you to do, if you're kind of new to the mode study, I would encourage you to practice your major scales, your harmonic, minor scales and your melodic minor scales from the root from root position. And just practice the scales, right. And remember, you just turned a major scale into a melodic minor scale by lowering the third, you turn the major scale into a harmonic minor scale by lowering the third and the sixth. And I would practice my 12 major scales, I would practice my 12 melodic minor scales by lowering the third. And then I would practice my 12 harmonic minor scales by lowering the third and the sixth, I would not worry about what sounds those scales and those modes are producing initially. And I would just have in the back of my mind knowing that what you're really playing when you're practicing your major scales, your harmonic minor melodic minor scales you're practicing the pure sounds of major dominant minor half diminished and diminished and you are practicing the altered sounds, for major dominant minor have diminished and diminished. It's pretty good feeling really, to know that when you're playing those three scales for all 12 notes that you're covering the pure and altered sounds of music, now, you may not understand how they split up between the mate the primary sounds and, and such, but that's okay, the start is getting getting the the sound and in your ears and under your fingers, okay, then, then you can begin worrying about the various separation or organization of the sounds based on major harm based on major dominant minor, half diminished and diminished, based on pure and based on altered, okay. I know that's a lot. But it's well worth it, right? Because you actually again, validate the authenticity of the sounds that you're practicing and why you're doing it. For example, this entire year, we have been focusing on fingering patterns, patterns and developing fingerings over the altered sounds, the dominant altered sounds. And where did I get these altered, these altered dominant sounds from the harmonic minor and the melodic minor scales. So we've been dealing with the flat nine, flat 13 sound from the harmonic minor, we've been dealing with the sharp 11 sound, the flat 13 sound, and the fully altered sound that come from the melodic minor scale. Right? So when you're practicing these patterns that we've been exploring throughout the entire year, you can do so with great confidence knowing that these are the altered sounds that you hear jazz musicians playing. And you know that where that these sounds are coming from the harmonic minor and melodic minor scales, pretty cool stuff. Wow. And we've done it again, right? We've unpacked a ton of information in one very short and one very fast hour. You know, this will probably be the last podcast

Dr. Bob Lawrence  39:26  
that I do on modes. I did a couple few years ago, a couple years ago on the harmonic minor modes and the melodic minor modes. And now I've done I've done Part Two, if you will, of the harmonic minor modes, melodic minor modes, the last month last month and now this month, and I can say with pretty good confidence that this there's a good chance the odds are the odds are in my favor, that this is the last time I actually devote an entire podcast episode. to discussing modes. So with all that being said, I would say to you as you embark upon your mode, study, be patient. Right? Just be patient, it's a little more intimidating than it actually is. And you will get it in time and it will start to make sense as as with all skills, right, sorted out conceptually first, and then worry about the physical plane and application of it after that, okay, so just be patient. All right now, I hope you found this jazz panel skills podcast lesson exploring the harmonic minor modes to be insightful and beneficial. I would encourage all of you ensemble ensemble members out there to utilize your podcast packets, the illustrations are fantastic, they will help you do just that sort out this information conceptually, the lead sheets are wonderful as well. So between last month's podcast episode on melodic minor, and now today's podcast on the harmonic minor modes, you have your you are armed with materials that will help you get a conceptual grasp of the modes and get you on your way to playing them and applying them in the right way. Okay, I will see you all Thursday evening at the jazz panel skills master classes 8 pm Central time to discuss this podcast episode exploring the harmonic minor modes in greater detail. And of course, they answer any questions that you may have about the study of jazz in general, you can always reach me by phone, my number here at the Dallas School of Music is 972-380-8050. My office extension is 211. If your preferred email my email address is Dr. Lawrence, drlawrence@jazzpianoskills.com. Or if you prefer the send a little nifty SpeakPipe voicemail to me you can do so it's a great little widget that's found on every page of the jazz panel Skills website. You can reach out to me that way as well. While there's my cue, love it. That's it for now. And until next week. Enjoy the harmonic minor modes and most of all, have fun as you discover, learn and play jazz piano!