Harmonizing Scales II: Minor Keys

Harmonizing scales part one.

As requested by Jason, I'll talk about the second most common scale for chord progressions to be written off which is the melodic minor scale, things here change however because the scale is different going up then it is coming back down. Upwards it's the same as the natural minor scale (or sixth mode of the major scale), with a sharp sixth and seventh note, downwards those notes revert back to the natural minor scale, looking like this:



This means we'll have two choices for notes when dealing with the sixth or seventh, I'll give the more common options.

i – Amin7
ii – Bmin7b5
iii – Cmaj7
iv – Dmin7
V – E7 (the third here is the #7 of the natural minor scale, this is primarily used due to the strength of the progression moving from a V7 down to a i chord)
VI – Fmaj7
VII – G7/Gmaj7 (Gmaj7 is often as to not to sound like it's leading to a i chord, VII7 usually leads to a i chord)

Now, if you're paying attention we have two notes that we haven't harmonized off yet, and that's the F# and G# giving us:

#vi – Fmin7b5
#vii – Gdim7

As far as progressions go the substitutions are the same as major keys, moving up in fourths is still the most common motion, you also begin to deal with the #vii and #vi chords being treated the same as the VI and VII chords – remember they're the same chords with a different root so they function exactly the same.

This style of creating chord progressions is far more common to be used over minor keys then it would be to use the A natural minor scale, especially when dealing with the V chord.