J. Anthony Allen shows how to build a natural minor scale by lowering the 3rd, 6th, and 7th degrees of any major scale by a half step. He demonstrates with C major becoming C natural minor, then E major and B♭ major, showing how accidentals work in different key signatures.
Okay, so the big question that we want to solve in this video is what notes are different between the major scale and the minor scale? And how are they different? So let's put our good old C major scale on the screen here, Okay? C major scale. All right, how do we turn this into a minor scale? There are three notes that have to change. Only three. Not everything is different. So three notes have to change. You might be able to guess the first one because remember, back to triads, right? When we learned triads, we found that a major triad was taking the first, third and fifth note of the scale. That would make a chord built on the root of the scale the tonic, right? So that would make a C major chord. If we took those three notes. And then in another section, we learned how to make a major triad into a minor triad, which, if you remember from the second class, I said the third is what holds the power to determine if it's major or minor. So from that you might be able to deduce this one probably has to change and by changing, it needs to go down a half step. So that is in fact our first note. That has to change. It's the third and it goes down a half step. Okay, let's move on the next note that has to change. Our fourth and our fifth stay the same. Our sixth has to change and it is also going to go down a half step. And then our third note is our seventh, which is going to go down a half step also. So our third, our sixth, and our seventh are the notes that change, and they all change by going down one half step. So here is our minor scale. Okay, now one more thing about this. There are. Unlike the major scale, the minor scale has couple different variations. The major scale is just the major scale. The minor scale could be one of three kinds of minor scales. This one here that we're looking at is called the natural minor scale. It's the. If there was just a normal old minor scale, this would be it. It's the kind of most common one. But in certain situations we have to use these other minor scales. Don't worry about that for now. I'm only saying this in case you've heard of these other minor scales and you're like, which one is that? So this is the natural minor scale. And we're going to talk about those other kinds of minor scales shortly. In the next couple sections, we'll talk about variations of the minor scale. But I want us to nail in on the natural minor scale. So let's start calling this the natural minor scale. And in your head. Okay. All right. So that's how we figure out a minor scale by taking a major scale. Let's do it again. Let's do it with a different key. Let's throw a key signature in here. How about. How about E? Okay, so we know this is the key signature of E major. Because if we take our last sharp, because that's the rule with sharps, and we go up a half step, it's an E. If you remember that rule. If you don't remember that rule, review the second class. Okay, so now we have the key signature for E. So let's take. Let's make an E major scale. Oops. Okay, there's my E major scale. Now this is going to get a little. This is going to look a little different, but everything is going to be the same. I'm going to take this G and I got to take it down a half step. But what is this note actually? This note, actually, because of that key signature, is A G sharp. So in order to take it down a half step, it's actually going to become a G natural is what it's going to be. Okay, gotta take my sixth down again. My sixth is C sharp. So by taking it down, it's gonna be a C natural. And the same thing with my seventh is gonna be a D natural. So this is now my scale, right? So the only actual accidental in it still is an F sharp. Everything else is natural. Let's do one more. But let's not use a key signature. And let's do. Let's do a B flat major scale. And I'm not going to use a key signature. I'm just going to write the notes with the accidentals in them so we can see how we change them. Okay, let's go out here. So. So we'll go to a B flat, C, D, E flat. So if you remember, the key of B flat has two flats. The key of B flat has two flats. So there are B flat and E flat. So there we go. Here's another B flat. So, okay, so let's alter this. So now to make a B flat minor scale, what we need to do is take our third, go down a half step, D flat. Our sixth down a half step, Our seventh down a half step. And that's it. So now we can see all these flats we have in here. This is kind of a gnarly key to play in, but that's okay. All right, so what we need to remember is if we have a major scale, and we want to turn it into a minor scale. We take the third, sixth and seventh down a half step, and that turns a major scale into a minor scale. Now, now that we've done that, let's walk through the half step, whole step pattern for a minor scale and learn how to build a minor scale that way.
