You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Minor Scales: The Grand Minor, a Single Unifying Minor Scale
Slap the lower and upper halves together, and what do you get? An all-purpose handy-dandy 10-note minor scale. It slices! it dices!
A B C D E F F♯ G G♯ A
This scale contains all of the notes of all three minor scale types. (Tables 25, 26, and 27). What’s it called? Why, the Grand Minor Scale, of course.
Go ahead, play it on your guitar or piano. Play it ascending, play it descending. You may think it sounds more “minor” than any of the other three minor scales.
You’ll find the Grand Minor Scale most useful in the discussion of melody in Chapter 9.
We owe the 10-note Grand Minor Scale to Stephen “Digger” Souza. (No, not the guy who fronted the heavy metal bands Testament and Exodus.) Digger Souza is a musician from Massachusetts who, in his rush to get a ride home from a concert one time, crashed over some chairs and dug his face into the rug, picking up some burn marks and a nickname at the same time.