Brent - your content is always impressive, but this one is highly effective. This is probably the most concise and useable application of melodic minor I have seen. It should accelerate anyone from playing boring lines over minor 2-5-1s into great sounding lines immediately.
Apart from the Altered scale, I believe the Lydian Dominant is the most useful mode of the Melodic Minor. You can play it over the tritone sub of the dominant chord: it will contain the same notes as the altered scale from the root of that dominant chord. Also, it works well over Dom7b5 or Dom9b5 chords with a regular, unaltered ninth in it. Finally, when played from the root of a Dom7 chord, it produces a kind of “altered light” sound, as it contains only the b5 as a non diatonic tone. Great video, see you @ the next Inner Circle Mastermind! Cheers, Anton
I have years of experience on guitar and about a decade on jazz guitar (Big Band mainly). This short video captures the essence of the most practical applications of the melodic minor with good "tricks of the trade" . Great Summary !
Good stuff Brent ! I’ve been down the rabbit hole with this scale for awhile and find a lot of unnecessary fluff and blah blah on the topic. This gets nice lines straight up. Thanks mate. 👍
I very much appreciate this video. I'd been starting to look at play Ab over the V chord, but I really didn't know incorporate it or what the 'rules', guidelines are. The other tips on the ii and the i are super useful. I'd love to see more content like this.
this lesson is fantastic. the "rules" you laid out are very easy to follow! i'm super excited to get crackin on the V7 altered stuff. this was a "lightbulb" lesson for me. so well done!!! THANK YOU!!
Thank you so much. I'm a long time subscriber and absolutely love the content... though this unlocked my brain! LOL I am a HUGE fan of the harmonic minor scale... though admittedly the melodic minor was more tricky. For years I worked with it on and off though while the harmonic minor is bitter sweet (with emphasis on the sweet) that major 6 was hard to really hear and conceptualize. I would use it over the V... though hearing you utilize it over the m7b5 is a revelation and using those together (as well as challenging myself to use it over the i chord) is wonderful. I appreciate you so much: I get it now.
Beautiful. Also I thought that the 1 minor was a minor major chordn(or minor 6 chord depending on the era why not) is because ut is functioning as a tonic minor Cheers
It's not "almost like you're playing the major scale on the end of the minor scale" it literally is this because it functions in the exact same way that the major scale functions - that is to climb up to the tonic. In fact, the majority of that melodic minor scale is actually a major scale thus it's really a major scale with a flat third.
Knowing the melodic minor scale based on the chord is great foundational knowledge. New or intermediate players, should just pick 4 good notes out of this scale. Those chords will go by fast and ultimately you don’t want to sound like you’re just playing scales. You want to sound musical and picking notes that have intervalic jumps (jump strings) will add some cool colors. These are great lessons and this guy is a very good teacher.
I find it interesting that jazz rarely has the 1 chord in its pure triadic structure, thus it is never stable and is like old people having multiple conversations over top of each other with no end... When I've tried to end on the triad it has always sounded out of place, too stagnant, but if I use a triadic pattern from a 9th, a 6th and omit something like the 5th it seems to fulfil both my need for a triadic stability and a consistency of colour with the piece just played.
Why did you not mention the C melodic minor over the G7?? That's what the C melodic minor was invented for historically..to accomadate for the fact that the V7 in a minor chord progression has a major third in it which puts it "outside" the diatonic chord progression. And saying that any time you see a min7 chord you can always play a melodic minor scale based on the root of the chord is just wrong. If it's a Em7 (iii7) in a C major chord progression why would you ever think that you can just throw in F#'s, C#'s, and D#'s??. Seems like chord/scale theory has struck again. I thought we had moved beyond that. Sorry for the rant.
Sorry not sorry, you mean. Clearly Brent provides a simplification here for beginners to get started, not a detailed study into the theory surrounding the application of the melodic minor. Usually, the comments are interesting to read because others may expand on the ideas to add value to the video - when this is done without the rant or scolding the creator these comments are much more valuable.
All the altered extensions you mention that are played over the V7 chords add tension, and you resolve them afterwards. Many many many jazz musicians "think that they can throw " altered extensions over that V7 chord and then resolve.
