I believe that the names assigned to various minor scales were poorly chosen and should be revised. Harmonic minor? What does that mean? Melodic? Aren't there plenty of major scales which are melodic? Natural? All of them are natural.

We use "ordinary" and "erotic." The ordinary minor is the one that starts on the sixth note of the major scale and keeps the same notes. The erotic starts on the sixth note and sharpens the seventh. We are considering calling it the belly-dance minor, however.

I believe that the scale which changes when going up or down is used in piano pieces of the Romantic era. It helps explain why music of that era sounds so mushy.

A friend of mine told me that she and her fellow piano majors looked forward to having Romantic pieces in their recitals because in pieces like that nobody can tell where you made a mistake. This tells us something.