Jambole.com – for Guitarists

The Harmonic Minor Scale is a wonderfully evocative scale. Full of Eastern promise and all that stuff!

So lets have a closer look at it.

Well it’s based on the Natural Minor or Aeolian Mode of the Major Scale, however the 7th note in the scale is sharpened.

So for example A Harmonic Minor would contain the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G# A

The interval from F to G# gives it its characteristic flavour.

Let’s have a look at it in all of it’s positions (3 Notes Per String).

As with the Major Scale, each note of the Harmonic Minor can be used as a root note, which creates a Harmonic Minor Mode with its own characteristics. One particular mode I’d draw your attention to is based on the 5th note of the Harmonic Minor.

In our A Harmonic Minor example, this would give use the notes E F G# A B C D E.

These are wonderful for playing over 7b9 or 7b9b13 chords. In our example these would be E7b9 and E7b9b13 chords.

Let me draw this mode out for you.

Enjoy and Let me know how you get on!