Harmonic and melodic major

The minor scale has three forms: natural, harmonic, with a raised seventh, and melodic, with a raised sixth and seventh on the way up. Med points out that the major scale has equivalent forms. The one everybody knows is the primitive form; the other two are harmonic major and melodic major (Med 1996, ch. XXIII).

The logic is a mirror. In minor, the forms raise notes and bring the scale closer to major; in major, the forms lower notes and bring it closer to minor.

Harmonic major

The harmonic major scale is the major scale with the sixth degree lowered by a semitone (Med 1996, ch. XXIII). On C, A becomes A flat:

Hear the scale

The A flat changes the shape of the scale. It now has three semitones, between the third and fourth degrees, the fifth and sixth, and the seventh and the octave, and it gains an augmented second between the sixth and seventh, from A flat to B (Med 1996, ch. XXIII). It is the same leap that gives harmonic minor its flavour.

The likeness is no accident. Compare it with C harmonic minor:

Hear the scale

The upper half of both scales, G, A flat, B, C, is identical. The only note that separates them is the third degree: E in harmonic major, E flat in harmonic minor (Med 1996, ch. XXIII). Harmonic major is, so to speak, a major scale below and a minor one above.

It goes by several names: principal mixed major scale, artificial harmonic major, as Rimsky-Korsakov called it, Hauptmann's scale, or simply the major scale with a minor sixth. Med notes that it already appears in the Baroque and Classical periods, and that Rimsky-Korsakov and twentieth-century composers used it (Med 1996, ch. XXIII).

The chords it brings

The practical reason to know harmonic major lies in its chords. With the A flat, two chords that do not exist in C major come to live inside it:

• on the fourth degree, F minor, F, A flat, C, in place of F major;
• on the seventh degree, the diminished seventh chord B, D, F, A flat, in place of the half-diminished B.

CITonicDiatonicFmivSubdominantBorrowedBdim7vii°7DominantBorrowedCITonicDiatonic

Hear the progression

F minor gives the plagal cadence a darker shade, and the B diminished seventh is an even tenser dominant, resolving to C with two semitones at once, B up to C and A flat down to G.

Here the books explain the same thing in two ways. For Med these chords are the chords of a scale, harmonic major. Blatter does not discuss that scale; for him, using the diminished seventh chord on the leading tone of a major key is borrowing a chord from the minor mode, and the minor subdominant is likewise a borrowing (Blatter 2007, part 3, art. 10). The notes are the same. The question changes: which scale does this chord come from, or which key was it taken from. Modal interchange, which has a topic of its own, follows Blatter's path.

Melodic major

The melodic major scale changes with direction. On the way up it is the major scale with no alteration at all:

Hear the passage

On the way down, the seventh and sixth degrees are lowered by a semitone (Med 1996, ch. XXIII):

Hear the passage

It is the exact reverse of melodic minor, which alters on the way up and returns to natural on the way down. Going up, the semitones lie between the third and fourth degrees and between the seventh and the octave; going down, between the sixth and fifth and between the fourth and third. And, as with harmonic major, the only difference from melodic minor is the third degree (Med 1996, ch. XXIII). Med also calls it the secondary mixed major scale.

How they show up in a score

The alterations of these scales never go into the key signature. A piece in C major that uses A flat keeps the C major signature, and the A flat appears as an accidental (Med 1996, ch. XXIII). So in practice harmonic major is not recognised from the signature, but by noticing the lowered sixth degree inside a clearly major key.

Med adds two caveats that hold for melodic forms in general. A melody is not obliged to follow the rule of going up one way and down another. And the upper half of the scale, where the sixth and seventh degrees are, ends up effectively chromatic, with both versions of each note available (Med 1996, ch. XXIII).

He also claims that the harmonic and melodic forms of the major scale are common in the folk music of the Balkans, the Middle and Far East and, above all, India (Med 1996, ch. XXIII).

What comes next

Harmonic major shows that the border between major and minor is more porous than key signatures suggest: one note is enough to bring a chord from the parallel minor into the key. Keys that sit close to one another, through the notes they share, are the next step of that idea.