hey guys, ive heard yngwie talk about melodic minor scales, but when i try to play them, it just dosent sound very classical, it just sound kind of jazzy. could some one tell me how to use them in neo-classical shred?

its basically playing harmonic going up then natural minor going down.

ok, so i play the harmonic minor scale going up, then the natural minor going down. but where does the melodic minor scale come in?

I think AC/DC means Melodic Minor going up and natural minor coming down. That is the way to play it in the classical tradition. In Jazz it's just played with the ascending version - A B C D E F# G# regardless of whether you are ascending or descending.

I think it would be used mainly on the dominant7 chord in a Minor Key in neoclassical stuff.

Eg.Play A melodic minor over E7 in the key of A minor. It has a more melancholic sound than the harmonic minor scale in my opinion.

^ya thanks for that HK, just did it off the top of my head which shows I need to work on it a bit more...

thanks alot, i will go try it out now.

I don't know what you are talking about here but thats completely incorrect^.

What Yngwie does with the melodic minor is mix it with the harmonic minor, making sort of a hybrid scale. This can sound very cool if used correctly, and you make sure not to end any phrases on controversial notes. So along with natural minor, harmonic minor, and phrygian dominant, he also uses a harmonic/melodic minor hybrid scale but never a straight melodic minor.

The standard melodic minor scale has a raised 6th and 7th ascending , and is back to natural minor descending... this is how it is traditionally use in the classical world, and it was chosen because of phrasing reason, and for singers.

It is a commonly used scale in jazz today.

I will see if i can get some more detail on how Yngwie used it with his harmonic minor, see if i can find some scale patterns. I learnt a new Yngwie solo a while ago where he used this concept. He uses this nowadays not so much in the 80s.

devon you completely missed the rest of the thread after my retarded post.

thanks devon, i will try it out

I didn't mean to make it sound as though I missed it, because I didn't. I read the whole thread.

well it was just cause you say the same things HK said lol, so I blindly assumed...

Just thought I'd add a post to this thread regarding a useful idea that I picked up a while back about using the melodic minor in jazz.

If you are playing over a IIm V7 I progression say Dmin7 G7 Cmaj7 try playing these scales over the changes.

Dmin7 - D dorian (or Cmaj scale if you like)

G7 - Ab Melodic minor

Cmaj7 - C maj scale

The Ab melodic minor scale works over the G7 because it hits all of the altered notes that you might put in a Dom7 chord - b9,#9,b5,#5 plus the 3rd, 7th and root. Its an easy way to sound Jazzy over a Dom7 chord. So in esscence just play the melodic minor scale a semitone up from the root of the Dom7 chord.

I prefer to think of the melodic minor as an alteration of the minor scale rather than a scale in itself. You're just altering the notes to fit the underlying harmony.

That and you're avoiding the augmented 2nd, which they didn't seem to like back in the Classical/Baroque days.

The reason I like to think this way, is becuase if you look at any classical piece, the moments where they use the melodic minor are usually small and pass by in an instant. The scale is just an abstraction created from those instants.

Of course thats trad harmony...20th Century and jazz/fusion bring different uses for it.

What about the double harmonic scale? It sounds very good, dark and enigmatic.

1 b2 3 4 5 b6 7
E F G# A B C D#
It's like a phrigian dominant without a b7

Also named Arabic scale, but I noticed thiere is some scales called "arabic" too.

Neat, that's a cool sounding scale for sure! Thanks for posting it.

Nice one, I do use this scale a bit and you're right there are a couple of variations of Arabian scales out there.