"My Friends" by RHCP is a more pure Dorian example though (at least the verses). Anything "blues inspired" is generally Mixolydian, but plenty of other things are - GLORIA, Louie Louie, What I Like About You and plenty of others, as well as sections of many songs.ĭorian is probably the next most common one (this is after basic major and minor) but it's often mixed in with plain minor a bit more - things like "White Room" start off with that Dorian idea but then use the bVI to put it back towards minor - but that whole kind of Dm - C - G/B progression is common. (so if you want to get technical, MM is somewhat like Dorian in that Dorian came first!!!)Ī lot of Santana songs (or ones they covered and made famous for many) are Dorian or largely Dorian - "Evil Ways" and "Oye Como Va" for example.Ī good example of a more traditional minor is "Smooth" which makes consistent use of the F chord, but the G# in the E chord to change that harmony but while we could say he's "using the Harmonic Minor Scale" for the lead parts, really he's using both G and G# at times - G is often bluesy, but sometimes he's just using the natural minor aspect of a traditional minor key, thus adjusting the G# as necessary for the harmonic purpose of going with the E chord (which is why the G natural appears in the opening lick, and doesn't hit G# until the harmony lands on that E chord).Įvil Ways BTW includes a D major chord, which is "out of mode" too for a similar reason, but otherwise it's very much a "Dorian Vamp" kind of piece. It's not really a "combination of melodic and harmonic" - though your point is valid and it could be seen from that perspective - but instead it's from something that pre-dates tonality - the Dorian Mode. So trying to look for "melodic minor" isn't all that helpful in that context.Īll that said, this is not a traditional minor key piece and is instead A Dorian as you suspect. So a piece of music could absolutely be in A Minor and have BOTH F and F#, and G and G#.
The Harmonic and Melodic Minor scales are merely devices to illustrate how 6 and 7 behave in each of those contexts, not not separate "scales to play" (or write with) and things like that. So instead, the way it works is a Minor * Key contains 7 notes, 2 of which - scale degrees 6 and 7 - are variable depending on melodic and harmonic needs. It's in a KEY (that's why it's tonal music :-) In fact, traditional tonal music is not "in scales" at all and it's not good to look at it that way. It's "in A" - starting on A, and thus has nothing to do with the Key of G other than sharing notes (just like G Major and E minor are two different things).Īdditionally, in traditional music that is "in a minor key" it's not "in the harmonic minor scale" or "in the melodic minor scale". It's not "in the key of G but starting on A". Now, there is modern treatment of this ascending portion "as a scale" and Jazz Minor is an example of that.īut part of my reason for pointing this out is your process is a bit flawed: Don't look at SCALES to determine KEYS. Instead, it's a device or mnemonic to illustrate how scale degrees 6 and 7 in a minor key behave in various melodic contexts - hence the name. The real answer is, it's because Melodic Minor is not really a scale at all in traditional use. If you look closely, you'll see that the Melodic Minor scale is listed in TWO forms - ascending, yes, it would have #6 and #7 (F# and G# in this example), but descending it returns to Natural Minor. If it was F# with G#, it’d be in a melodic A minor scale Just as an expansion on this since you cross posted to music theory: That's a mode, not a key, so "officially" it's not in a Key, it's in a Mode. It's in A Dorian (that is, the chord progression the OP provided, not the actual chords of the song).
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