Submit your Week 4 compositions here! (And a brief walk-through) (Patreon)

This week's intimidating goal was to write a minor key piece that utilizes the tritone (easily introduced via the II chord) but ALSO demonstrates a clear usage of melodic minor.

I've attached an extremely simple example of melodic minor below. It's just i - V in Am (so Am to E) with A natural minor occuring over the i and A melodic minor over the V. Here's what the melody looks like - notice how the ryhthm is consistent (1 + 2 + 3 4 ) over and over, it helps keep things structured in such a small space! And as you can see, in the first half we have a natural G and a natural F, but in the second half we use G# and F# instead. Also notice how we don't care about that "going up we do this, going down we do that" thing; the melodic minor scale is the same in both directions!

I've also attached two other pieces that utilize more indepth changes: Melodic Minor 1.mp3 is just Em (i) - C/E (bVI) - A (IV) - B (V7), then Em - C/E - F# (II) - B. You'll hear bits of E melodic minor over that V7 chord.

Melodic Minor 2.mp3 is a longer progression utilizing a "line cliche," where the triad stays unchanged while a melody moves atop. You'll see this in the first three chords.

Em - Tonic (i). I'm thinking Em scale but in practice, I only use a few notes of the scale.

EmMaj7 - I can't play b7 anymore, it'll rub ub against the maj7 in this chord, so I switch to E harmonic minor.

Em7 - I revert to regular Em scale to accommodate this b7.

A - I know this IV chord means that I need to raise the 6th, so I start thinking E Dorian scale instead. However, I really only play the new 6th and don't play a scale run.

C - This bVI chord is in regular E minor, so I'm thinking back to that scale. In practice, I just play a Cadd9 arpeggio cause I like it and I know that's in Em.

F# - I know this II chord can easily be accommodated by switching to E Dorian #4, so I play a big scale run using those notes. However, I could have just played an F# arpeggio and it still would have sounded great.

B9sus4 - I play a giant Bsus4 arpeggio

B9 - I use this opportunity to play the E melodic minor scale. B9 uses a C# note, which is the raised 6th in our parent key of E minor. I don't want to play regular E Aeolian which contains a b6, that'll clash harshly.

Note: Next week's class will be moved to Tuesday afternoon central time, but I'll still need you all to try to submit your final files by late sunday (or early monday) so I have time to properly get them reviewed. If you're late, that's fine, just email me the track directly and I'll llet you know what I think!