Re: [Harp-L] Harmonic Minor Modes?

["Eugene Ryan" <ryan.eugene@xxxxxxxxx>]

You were asking about modes of harmonic minor.  There are indeed 7
modes as there are 7 notes in the scale.  Modes 1 and 5 are commonly
used outside of klezmer as well.  The rest can be useful when you want
to get away from your tried and trusted scales IMO, but if I was going
about learning modes of scales, I would learn and nail the modes of
the following scales in this order:
1. modes of major scale
2. modes of melodic minor
3. then, the modes of harmonic minor

Obviously, that order may not work for you so feel free to ignore my
advice.  You'll find other scales would creep into your practise
anyway, like diminished, whole tone, blues scale, pentatonics - it's
all a load of pentatonics.

I did up a chart some time ago showing the mode number,  name, the
notes in the scale, what that looks like digitally, the defining
characteristics of the scale and the chord over which that mode would
fit.  If this doesn't look too well due to the text format, copy and
paste it into a fixed-width-font program like Windows Notepad or vi on
unix (or Courier font in MS Word) and all will be revealed:

Mode	Mode name		Scale			Digital notation	Defining characteristics	Chord
1	harmonic minor		C D Eb F G Ab B C	1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7	b3 b6 	maj7 b6				Cm maj7
2	locrian nat 6		D Eb F G Ab B C D	1 b2 b3 4 b5  6 b7	b2 b5 6 b7			Dm7b5
3	ionian #5		Eb F G Ab B C D Eb	1 2 3 4 #5 6 7		#5				Ebmaj7#5
4	dorian #4		F G Ab B C D Eb F	1 2 b3 #4 5 6 b7	#4 m3 maj6 m7			Fm7#11
5	spanish phrygian	G Ab B C D Eb F G	1 b2 3 4 5 b6 b7	b2 b6 b7			G7 b9
6	lydian #2		Ab B C D Eb F G		1 b3 3 #4 5 6 7		#2 #4				Ab maj7 #11
7	altered bb7		B C D Eb F G Ab		1 b2 b3 3 b5 b6 bb7	bb7				B dim 7

I hope that helps,
Eugene