Songs that use the Harmonic Minor scale

this video is sponsored by Squarespace use the promo code in the description to get 10% off your first purchase the harmonic minor is one of the three main minor scales in music out of the three different minor scales it's the natural minor scale which is generally considered to be the default a lot of the time particularly in pop music when the piece of music is in a minor key it will use the natural minor scale the harmonic minor is almost identical to the natural minor it's only one note different this note the leading note of the harmonic minor is raised it's only one semitone away from the octave so for example in G natural minor the 7th note the leading note is f natural but in G harmonic minor the leading note is f sharp it's been raised and although this may seem like only a small adjustment it makes a big difference to how the scale sounds [Music] for example because the seventh note has been raised it's made of this interval here between the sixth and seventh note unusually wide it's an interval of a minor third three semitones which is unusually big for a Western scale this gives the upper half of the harmonic minor scale an exotic Arabic like sound Barre a friend by Billy Eilish uses the G harmonic minor scale you can see here that rather than an F natural we have an F sharp beyond this F sharp note this D major chord is also here thanks to the harmonic minor scale and the D major chord is functional here because it creates a perfect cadence a resolution from the five chord to the one chord the dominant to the tonic the perfect cadence is part of what makes Barre a friend sound the way it does and because a perfect cadence requires the major version of the fifth chord the D major in this case in the natural minor we can't have a perfect cadence because the fifth chord of the natural minor is a minor chord the big benefit of the harmonic minor scale is that we can use it to write a functional harmony that's why we call it the harmonic minor scale in case you're unfamiliar with the concept of functional harmony put simply it's when each chord in a progression has a function so in Barre a friend the one chord the G minor has what we call tonic function tonic function is when the chord is fully at rest and resolved there is no tension the next core to the C minor is the fourth chord in the key and has what's called sub dominant function quartz with sub dominant function introduce some tension because they want to resolve onto a dominant chord and in Barry a friend to that's exactly what happens we move from C minor the subdominant chord to D the dominant chord dominant function is begging to resolve back to the tonic when we're on the D chord our ears really want to resolve back onto the tonic chord onto the G minor so when you really boil it down functional harmony is just about how much tension is in each type of chord the tonic chord has no tension the sub-dominant has some tension and the dominant has lots of tension many other pop songs use the harmonic minor in a similar way to bury a friend [Music] I travel the world and the seven seas everybody's looking for something me in my head and my team get on without mine berry a friend that isn't even the only song that Billy eyeless uses the harmonic minor in she actually uses the exact same chord progression in her song bad guy to be so screwed like nose thank you so both my knees filled all of these songs use the harmonic minor to create neat functional chord progressions in the minor key of course when you're writing a song you don't have to limit yourself to just one scale we don't have to stay in harmonic minor for the whole thing a song could just as easily blend the harmonic minor with the natural minor this is one of the best things about the minor key you can switch between different versions of the scale to get different flavors a good example of this is girl by the Beatles girl switches back and forth between the harmonic and the natural minor scale the song starts out in harmonic minor as we can see from this nice perfect cadence we then go natural minor harmonic minor natural minor harmonic minor creating a real blend of the two different scales is there anybody [Music] [Applause] [Music] she's the kind of girl you answer for many listeners the sound of the harmonic minor scale evokes a classical or baroque sound [Music] the harmonic minor scale was a common choice in pre romantic classical music for example bounce famous Toccata and Fugue in d-minor the intro of plug-in baby by Muse also uses the harmonic minor scale and this is what gives us intro that bark like classical like sound [Music] the last example of harmonic minor that we'll look at today is two plus two equals five by Radiohead the raised seventh the harmonic minor note is a key part of two plus two equals five sound appears repeatedly in the vocal melody and the harmony the harmonic minor scale is an integral part of what gives this song its sound [Music] [Music] unlike the major scale the minor scale could be slightly harder to get your head around mainly because of those three different incarnations the natural minor the harmonic minor and the melodic minor but hopefully now you have a better grip on the harmonic minor and you know how it can sound in practice that said if you can think of any other examples of the harmonic minor scale in a song then please do put them in the comments down below and a massive thank you goes to Squarespace who sponsored this video rather than building a website from the ground up Squarespace gives you a whole toolbox of it pre-existing components that you can throw together and instantly make a good-looking user-friendly website for example if you want to embed your YouTube videos it's easy all you have to do is use the YouTube element here and in add the link in you can start building your website today with the free trial and then when you're ready to make your first purchase you can use the promo code in the description to get 10% off thank you very much and a big thank you goes to everybody who supports me on patreon including Adam Granger and Royce Anastasia Andrew Brown Andy Deacon Austin Barrett Bob McKinstry Brittney Parker Bruce Mount Chris Korbel Kieran Benin Daniel long Darrin Harvey David defender fur dr. Darren wicks L&S korchenko s Ben Hansen Eugene Leroy eyes FD Hodor Gulf House Graham bids Gilliam o letona James ko jae-hak and Sparko Jo bass on Jonas Soderstrom Jonathan banks justin bigger lavender mint rosemary ellos melody composer squared Michael Vivian Nancy Gillard Nicholas Orlando Bernard Cavallo Ocampo Paul Miller Paul paisa Peter Dunphy Roger clay schnitzel Kraft Steve daily Thomas Armstrong Tim beaker Timothy pain toot Vedad flowers Vladimir cotta cough and Lucas Pacheco [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 944,530

Rating: 4.9466162 out of 5

Keywords: music theory, harmonic minor scale, minor scale, dominant, subdominant, tonic, explained, analysis, billie eilish, the beatles, radiohead, muse, bach, pop music, examples of, pop songs in minor, minor key, natural minor, melodic minor, perfect cadence, major chord, john lennon, thom yorke, grammys, aeolian, modes

Id: -amnre-0I3w

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/YarnSpinner]

Good stuff; good rhetoric; fun to watch!