You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
5.3.5 Melodic Minor and Natural Minor: What's the Difference?
The natural minor scale (the "relative minor" of a major scale) is the same, whether ascending or descending. In fact, it's the same as the melodic minor, but only the descending version of the melodic minor. The ascending version of the meldoic minor is different.
Table 25 below shows all the notes and scale degrees for all 12 scales of the natural minor mode (descending melodic minor). Notice the difference in the pattern of tones and semitones, compared with the major mode (Table 24). Again, the shaded bars are only a visual aid; they have no musical significance.
The scales in Table 25 are the relative minors of those in Table 24.
And, of course, it’s equally correct to say the scales in Table 24 are the relative majors of the scales in Table 25.
The melodic minor comes in two, count ‘em, two flavors: descending and ascending. More about this in a minute.