The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59200   Message #944639
Posted By: Mark Cohen
01-May-03 - 11:38 PM
Thread Name: Relative Minor Key signatures?
Subject: RE: Relative Minor Key signatures?
Well, technically, Benjamin, the Aeolia is what we now know as the Natural minor scale. There's also the Harmonic minor, and the other one, whose name, of course, I've forgotten. (I think it's either Spasmodic or Demented, but I may have it wrong.)

The minor scale once went like this, but people found it hard to sing

And so they raised the seventh note, a higher leading tone to bring

And then they made it go like this, it's easy now as anything


I remember that from my piano lessons at age 7. (I also seem to remember that the Spasmodic minor, or whatever it is, has a sharped sixth and seventh going up, but a natural sixth and seventh coming down. I never figured out how that was possible, outside of Hanon.)

Aloha,
Mark