The melodic minor scale is a favorite amongst musicians once they learn it. A beautiful scale which is simply a major scale, but with a flat 3rd.
Though many may know how to play the scale, majority of them fail to use them in musical context due to lack of melodic vocabulary.
It's not very easy for anyone to learn how to use a scale without any internalisation, and that's where having some melodic vocabulary helps.
In this blog, we will learn 5 simple melodic phrases based on this exotic scale which you can add to your vocabulary to get started.
The Method
If you read my last blog about A Simple Approach To Creating Melodies, we will be using that method for these phrases.
Click Here to read that blog!
The Rhythmic Idea
For this blog, I came up with 5 simple rhythmic ideas without using dotted notes. Let's take a look at them:
Notice that, if you perform these rhythmic ideas one after the other, it sounds like a complete rhythmic etude.
The Key Centre
To maintain simplicity I initially thought of choosing 'A', but then decided to choose 'C' as the key centre.
The Scale
As mentioned at the beginning, the melodic minor scale is simply a major scale, but with a flat 3rd.
So, if we know the notes of a C major scale, C D E F G A B, we simply flatten the E and make it an Eb.
This leaves us with the following notes: C D Eb F G A B.
Choosing Our Notes
I will be choosing notes out of this scale by ear, but the number of notes will be the same as the rhythmic elements in each rhythm above.
Please note that, the octave for each note is also something I'm choosing by ear. And I encourage you to do so as well.
The more you explore, the more organic you sound. Let's now choose notes for each rhythmic idea one by one:
7 notes: C Eb - A - G D F Eb.
7 notes: B C D - Eb F G B.
10 notes: C - C C C C - C A - G Eb D
9 notes: C B C D - Eb F G A - C
9 notes: C - B C D Eb - F G A - B
Putting Them Together
We have our rhythms, we have our notes. Now let's put them together:
Add these to you vocabulary, and try playing these over a Cmin/maj7 vamp to get started.
Eventually try playing over some jazz standards, and use these phrases over the altered dominant chords.
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