Harmonic Major’s b6 literally flattens and removes the minor key. The minor key is equal to a major key’s 6 th degree. In Harmonic Major there are only major keys. Many examples of the circle show the major and minor keys. To make better sense of this, let’s look at the charts below and compare the Major Scale to Harmonic Major.Īnother way of thinking about this is through the circle of fifths. This causes all the notes in Harmonic Major to focus on resolving toward the 1 st degree note, which is what happens when we play in Ionian. We can no longer move to a 6 th degree Aeolian sound because it simply doesn’t exist. We are now “stuck” with a tonal center that is major.

Now think of it without a single minor key to use. Think of the circle of fifths and all those major keys. Without this mode we no longer have a relative minor key. This one change creates all the interesting aspects of Harmonic Major.īy not having a 6 th degree, we do not have an Aeolian mode. The Harmonic Major Scale uses the same degrees as the Major Scale, except for the major sixth degree. If you are unfamiliar with some of the terminology used in this article, then check out previous topics in the Let’s Play Music series such as #2 Functional Harmony, #5 Connecting Chords with Modes, and #10 Putting Musical Pieces Together Through Analysis.

Ultimately, I want you to be able to use Harmonic Major as a set of textures that can be added to your pallet of Major Scale sounds. It will also help us to create new tensions and resolutions to those tensions, which in turn helps us to expand our musical vocabulary. This extra degree will allow us to add in chord structures that are not found in the Major Scale. To do that we’ll use what we know about the Major Scale and add in one more degree. I want to make Harmonic Major enjoyable and useful to you. This set me up for failure because I had no way of connecting this new scale to what I already knew in the Major Scale (aka Melodic Major). When I first started learning the Harmonic Major scale, I was learning it as a completely new scale.

D flat minor scale