Reader,
I've always been drawn to minor key standards. Beautiful Love, Summertime, Alone Together... there's something about that haunting, sophisticated sound that major keys just can't touch.
But when it came to actually playing them myself? I felt clumsy and unsure. I loved the sound but couldn't quite capture it under my own fingers.
The breakthrough came when I got fluent with harmonic minor and started applying the same chord movement principles I already knew from major keys. Suddenly I could access that mysterious minor sound I'd been chasing for years.
Getting comfortable in harmonic minor
This Friday, we will dive into a great minor tune, Beautiful Love. If you want to get a head start on that:
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Find and obsess over 3 recordings. You can pick your own, or here are mine:
- Download the lead sheet: Beautiful Love.pdf
- Work through the melody and chords and get as comfortable as you can playing the tune with a good swing feel.
On top of that, I'd like you to drill D harmonic minor in a few ways. First, just get familiar with the scale up and down:
Learning scales linearly is great, but to really solo with them, we need to learn the sound of harmonic minor, which means visualizing the scale at the instrument. Look at the keys, and in your minds eye, light up each note of the scale. Notice how it's all white keys except for Bb and C#?
That interval from Bb to C# is also an unusually large interval for a scale... a minor 3rd! That's an important part of the sound.
Next, run it in 3rds:
From here, try some other patterns. Try the scale but in 4ths. Or perhaps try arpeggiating the 4 notes of each diatonic 7th chord from the key.
Or here's another of my favorites, playing each triad, but with a half-step approach before each one:
Lastly, spend a few minutes inventing your own melodic phrases using the notes of D harmonic minor. Use your ear, and really dig into that dark, beautiful sound.