Playing Piano: Harmonic, Melodic Minors P.3

Learn how to play harmonic and melodic minors on piano - Part 3. In this lesson I clear up why there is a tone and a half in a harmonic minor scale, I go into detail about leading tones, and what a harmonic and melodic scale is used for.

(Piano playing) So, what they did is they are like, okay well let us raise this up and then there will be a semitone gap and then we’ll have relating tone (Demonstration). Now, the name for this one in a minor scale (Demonstration), if you would be at the 7th at where it is, it is actually called the subtonic, that is the name for it. Now they do not want to have the augmented 2nd on there. So for piece writing they avoid the augmented 2nd, so how they do that is they raise the F here, so the G is raised and the F gets raised too. So, now to the melodic (Demonstration) and then we lower them on the way back down because there is no need to have this anymore (Demonstration). Just like that. There is no need to have a leading tone calling you back towards the key you are trying to go away from (Demonstration), right? Just like that, it sounded perfectly fine. So, they will use the melodic scale only trying to write melody lines (Demonstration). Stuffs like that and then they will have the harmonic at the end they will be like, okay, well now we need a five chord like an ending chord so they will go (Demonstration) or you could just alter that a little bit (Demonstration) put the beat here (Demonstration) like that and now you have got the five one perfect key tones. So that is the reason for the whole raising this up into note and then the 6th note. Now, here you can take another quick look at the patterns here. So when we practice these actually, basically no one ever practices the natural harmonic scale anymore (Demonstration). It is very unused. Basically, all of it what do you do practice in melodic piano studies is (Demonstration) melodic scale and in the melodic, you raised the 6th and 7th on the way up and learn lower on the way down (Demonstration). Again, if you want to keep going up (Demonstration) and then if you get into harmonic, you also practice these, you practice harmonic and melodic. Harmonic is just 7th up both ways, so (Demonstration). Just like that. So, it is really not that complicated if you just think harmonic goes with harmony, melodic goes with the melody. A natural minor is just, it is like the blind version. It is like “Hey! I ordered the best burger and it has nothing on it, let us spice it a little!” Cheesy smiley face. Can you see me? Anyway, so it just—I do not know. I guess that is all it went going after here. I am sort of running out what I need to say on this topic. Well, I hope everything is going well with your piano studies. Hopefully my videos are starting to help people and lot. I do get a lot of responses from it so it is nice to hear. One thing I really would like is if somehow, I ever got featured although everyone wants that. So, it is not like I am hoping anything more than. But most people want, that way but it is still been asked because people that have not seen my videos and I am still working for someone to teach them piano or something and they would be able to find it easy because it would be more popular, more kissable. Anyway, I really appreciate everyone’s support over the past months of my surgery and stuff and as you can see I can talk. I still have some stitches on the back of my mouth, I was like swelled up to like here and is all swollen like all the way down my neck. All the way to here is like puff, puff, puff and I have all these bruising around here. My tongue is like swelled up when I was in the hospital and all I have is like this little nasal passage. It sounds like—trying like to suck air bag. I was great for me actually and then the nurses are really nice actually. So, I was not allowed to have any food, like good food. Just last night, I had pizza for the first time in like a month. Cheese and bread and tomato sauce and some pepperoni never tasted so good. Yum! Yum!