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Yes, it would be, but by convention we always discuss a scale in its ascending form when discussing intervals. That avoids a lot of confusion.

. . . unless, of course, that "scale" in question happens to be melodic minor.

Sorry KeyString, I am waiting for the other big fish to bite on this one. He's probably sleeping right now, so we'll give it a few more hours.

Why are we even talking about modes? They have no relevance to the OP's question.

The forms of the minor scale do, but I fear we're making things far more complicated than they really are. It's this simple:

Major is major. It's like vanilla. That's it. Major. Vanilla.

Minor is different. It's like chocolate. There's "natural" chocolate, but, like minor, nobody really uses "natural" chocolate. It doesn't become all that useful or tasty until you process it.

So we have two ways of processing minor. One way is to raise the 7th, which works really well in 18th and 19th century styles where things like dominant chords and leading tones are important. Another way is to raise 6 and 7 ascending, which can help smooth out melodies.

For the sake of argument, let's call harmonic minor dark chocolate and melodic minor milk chocolate. That doesn't mean that other kinds of chocolate don't exist and that dark and milk chocolate can't live together in the same piece. It happens all the time - we combine chocolates (minors!) according to taste and style.

When people get confused about music theory, it's usually because they want an answer to the question "which kind of minor is this piece in?" But that's like asking "which kind of chocolate is in this cookie?" Not all cookies are 100% milk or 100% dark chocolate. (I myself mix the two in chocolate chip cookies, it's yummy!) And don't forget about white chocolate!

Now...this isn't music theory's fault. (And it's not cocoa's fault.) That's just how life is. Music usually involves a combination of sounds, just as food involves a combination of flavors. Nobody gets bent out of shape because a recipe calls for dark chocolate *and* milk, so why should we get bent out of shape when a piece contains leading tones and flattened sevenths?

Well, the answer is already there. You DON'T discuss intervals descending - period.

However, btb's proposed intervals for minor are only true for one kind of minor, while the minor scale fluctuates for the 6th and 7th, as we all know. Going by btb's description, he is describing the melodic minor.

A(T)B(t)C(T)D(T)E(T)F#(T)G#(t)A

I see that you are fishing for the descending melodic minor, which we are taught in lessons to play in the form of the natural minor. Actual compositions don't necessarily follow that pattern, but we're still taught it that way.

So you want to see (read backward of course)

A(T)B(t)C(T)D(T)E(t)F(T)G(T)A

Btw, I tend to think of intervals in scales like one sees the holes in a fence between the slats marking the distance between the slats. There is a delightful German nonsense poem about the Gartenzaun mit Zwischenraum, (The garden fence with "in-between-spaces" between the slats), and the poet proposes building a house out of the Zwischenraum. In the same way an interval is a thing that isn't. It is Zwischenraum. (ducks and hides)

I don't know either.

It started because I was asked what "natural minor" was called in my theory courses, I said "Aeolian mode" (when it was called anything at all, which it usually wasn't), and then began this series of digressions and tangents.

Meanwhile, as far as I'm concerned we still don't really know what Lucy was asking, or whether she's gotten anything from any of this. I would have wanted to get some clarification from her before trying to get into anything at all.

Kreisler, I thought you had already answered the initial question.

I was going to respond but the original question wasn't entirely clear ... and I'm really glad I didn't.

Yeah, Lo Presti and I pretty much had it covered, though given the OP's inexact terminology, there was a bit of guesswork.

It's always interesting to see how these discussions go. Theory's one of those odd subjects that's very difficult to treat. It's very rigorous, but not really, and only sometimes. And there are multiple right and wrong answers with several dividing lines between the two that tend to be either clear or not. And the language, perspective and background of the author and reader adds a lens that further obfuscates the lack of clarity. And that's in the US. Add Europe and Canada into the mix and....

I think I finally got Lucy's question.

Take C minor.
She's talking about the bVII -- i.e. we have not raised Bb of the signature to Bnat (which we can do and often do) so we don't have a Bdim --- we have Bb which is a major chord.

Then she is asking about the "7th" in a bVII7 (Bb7) and she is asking whether the 7th (which is the 6th of the scale) is raised.

Ok, in Cm, the 6th note is Ab. Bb7 = BbDFAb. Lucy is asking whether the Ab that we find in the key of Cm is raised. Well, with a raised Ab, we'd get Bb(maj7). If we want a Bb7, then the Ab stays as it is, to answer that question directly.

Now going on, Lucy is asking in the context of a cadence. A cadence concludes a phrase and/or brings the music to some tonality. Thus we have V-I, V7-I, and sometimes viio-I (the viio can be seen as the top part of a V7, or it can be seen as having leading note and other significant notes that like to move to the tonic). The viio-I is usually written in first inversion, especially in minor (viio6-Im). And here we would have had a raised B for BDF to Cm. For a seventh I guess we'd have BDFAb = Bdim7. I could see Bdim7 moving to Cm.

Back to Lucy's Bb. I suppose we could move from Bb to Cm. But would that be a cadence? Is the movement strong enough to be felt as a cadence? (Real question - not rhetorical).

The Bb7 however (bII7) is the V7 of the relative major - key of Eb major. So it would be a perfect way of transitioning from a minor key (C minor) to a major key (Eb major). Meanwhile, I can move from Bb7 to Cm but I have no idea whether that is a good move. My "harmonic ear" is not that developed.

Keystring: Why don't we wait until Lucy herself tells us what she meant. Otherwise we're just guessing, and it ain't worth it.


Yes, there was -- so how can you feel you had anything covered?


What I find most interesting is how people felt they could answer a question without being sure what it was.

Wouldn't you feel the best thing is to ask for clarification first? Otherwise, you're expending your brain energy for perhaps nothing.

I see that that doesn't bother you much, nor some others. Me, I can't get interested in trying to answer something till I know what it is. I also think it's often even more helpful to the questioner him/herself to let them know they need to clarify what they're talking about than to answer their question, because helps them with the clarity of their thought and expression. I think that's usually way more important than knowing the answer to a particular thing.

The point was to parse it out, so that she could tell us if this is what she meant. When you don't have enough formal theory, you also don't have the vocabulary, which puts you into a difficult position. Sometimes when it is reworded it's helpful.

Besides, ** I ** also asked questions and I am interested in thoughts on them.

Not really. As I suggested to her in an earlier post, it might well be that all she'd need to do would be to forget about the terminology and just tell us the notes she's talking about.


Fine, and maybe some people will want to get into those, but it would take wading through a post (i.e. yours) that tries at length to clarify the totally unclear question of someone who seems not to be here and not available to help with it, before getting to the part where you ask your questions. Maybe some people will want to do that. I wouldn't (didn't even get to that part of your post) because of what I've said -- that it's a waste of time (and brain cells) to give any attention to trying to guess anything about her question. I suspect some others would feel that way too.

So, why take all this time with these posts? Because talking like this doesn't require brain cells.
This is just talking.

The beauty of forums is that there are so many people out there who will potentially read these posts, all of them different from one another. So what is hard or heavy "wading" for one, might not be so for another. For example, you found Ed Lopresti's summary of minor scales to be hard reading even for someone with advanced theory. It was familiar territory for me, and I think I got the gist of it in maybe 30 seconds, and then another minute just to make sure. In the same way, my own post with its questions on the bottom may just be up someone's alley. Different strokes for different folks, and if you don't post you'll never know. So I did.

I love the phrase - well, butchering it, attempting to pronounce - and I love the concept!

We may see some things a little differently but I give this a big thumb up.

How remarkable! I stay up late to study for an exam on the history of Roman art and architecture in relation to political and military history, and here I find this! What a coincidence!

Yeah -- but better not take any answers from here!

In other words, you trolled...

I think Lucy got scared away...

Well, I've never seen a wet fuse ignite, so it was rather ineffective trolling.

As long as this thread is still alive ... and those old Greek modes are being discussed, I'll pass on a little memory trick I used to memorize those modes.

If we use a major scale as the starting point and ascend we have ...

I = Ionian
D = Dorian
P = Phrygian
L = Lydian
M = Mixolodian
A = Aeolian
L = Locrian

I don't play loud music at lunch.

... or I dig pot, leave me alone.