this is part three of a series of videos designed to help you calculate and understand minor scales in this video i'll be explaining melodic minors and it is important that you've watched part one where i detail how to calculate natural minus an essential step towards calculating melodic minors you may also find it useful if you haven't already done so to have a look at part two where i discuss harmonic minors in the bottom left hand corner of the screen you'll see that i've left the instructions for harmonic minors which we looked at in part two i've hidden them slightly so not to confuse us with our work on melodic minors in this video most importantly i've left the instructions on how to calculate the natural minor scale you must always follow steps one and two and thus create the natural minor scale in order to calculate a melodic minor scale let's assume we wanted to calculate c melodic minor ascending and descending here's the c natural minor scale we calculated in part one so that's steps one and two completed to convert this natural minor into a melodic minor we need to add two additional steps i'll detail them down in the bottom right hand corner step three raise the sixth by a semitone ascending only step four raise the 7th by a semitone ascending only now if you've watched part 2 you'll be familiar with what i mean by these instructions but to clarify firstly if you're not sure what are semitones have a look at my video about accidentals and semitones this explains everything you need to know secondly when i say raise this means add a semitone to the sixth and seventh notes and thirdly when i say sixth and seventh i mean the sixth and seventh notes of the scale we count the notes from the lowest c until we reach the sixth note this one a flat a flat due to the key signature and this note is the seventh note what note is it it's b flat not b don't forget to always keep an eye on the key signature okay so step three tells us to raise the sixth note by a semitone therefore we change the sixth note to a one semitone higher than a flat step three complete step four tells us to raise the seventh note by a semitone therefore we change the note highlighted to be one semitone higher than b flat step four complete this is your answer c melodic minor one extremely important thing to notice is that we make zero absolutely no changes to the descending notes the descending melodic scale is exactly the same as the descending natural minor scale therefore i'm going to make an additional note at the bottom of the screen now this note may seem like overkill but so many students slip up on this with the harmonic version of the scale you change the seventh both ascending and descending the melodic version of the minor scale is different ascending and descending as we only change the sixth and seventh notes ascending let's look at another example f melodic minor ascending and descending we still need to calculate the natural minor scale first so step one calculate the key signature here's our circle of fifths here's the f we start counting from the a one two three four f is four steps away from a on the flat side of the clock so the key signature has four flats in it we take the first four letters of the order of flats in the bottom left hand corner b e a and d they make up our key signature let's pop them onto the stave step 1 complete step 2 write in the notes we start on f as in f melodic minor and then place a note on every line and every space up to the next f and don't forget this question asks for both the ascending and descending so let's start on the f again and a note in every space and on every line down to the next f step two is complete we now have f natural minor ascending and descending to convert this scale to a melodic minor step three raise the sixth note by a semitone one two three four five here's the sixth note d flat by raising it a semitone it becomes d therefore we pop a natural symbol to show that it is d and not d flat step three complete step four raise the seventh note by a semitone here's the seventh note e flat raising it by a semitone makes it e pop in that natural symbol step 4 complete that's the ascending melodic minor scale completed as we do not make any changes to the descending scale there's nothing else to do we have our ascending and descending f melodic minor scale always remember that there's no changes to make to that descending melodic minor scale as per my instructions at the bottom of the screen finally let's try a rather tricky example g-sharp melodic minor ascending step one calculate the key signature here's our circle of fifths g sharp is over here now a couple of things to note firstly if you watch my videos on the circle of fifths you'll know that the g sharp is in brackets as it is the n harmonic equivalent of a flat if you need a recap of n harmonic equivalents have another look at the circle of fifths video or my video on accidentals secondly as the key has a sharp in its name that's g sharp we count around on the sharp side of the clock this way if the name of the scale had a flat in it such as a flat we count around the flat side of the clock this way always make sure you count around the correct side of the clock we're aiming for g sharp so we start counting from the a one two three four five g sharp is five away from a on the sharp side of the clock it therefore has five sharps in its key signature here's our order of sharps we take the first five letters f c g d and a let's pop these in order onto our stave step one complete step two write in the notes we start on the g sharp now don't write in the sharp as it's in the key signature and we ensure that there is a note on every line and in every space up to the next g sharp step two complete we have our ascending natural minor scale to convert it to a melodic minor we follow step three raise the sixth a semitone starting at the g sharp we can't until the sixth note this one it's an e it becomes e sharp not f i appreciate that they are effectively the same note but they're not if you pop an f onto your stave you then have two notes on the f line you must not allow this to happen so the sixth note is e sharp i'll go into a little more detail about this in part two have a look there if you need to refresh on this rule step three complete step four we raise the seventh by a semitone here's the seventh note it's an f sharp f sharp due to the key signature now if we raise this note by a semitone it becomes g we're not allowed to put in a g as there'll be two notes on the g line always remember that there must only be one note per line and space in major and minor scales so what do we do we use a double sharp the seventh note becomes f double sharp if you're not entirely familiar with double sharps or double flats have a look at my video about accidentals which goes into details about them in a nutshell a double sharp raises a note by two semitones and a double flat lowers a note by two semitones therefore f double sharp is actually played as a g but using the double sharp avoids breaking that very important rule with major and minor scales no more than one note per line or space that's it step four complete and we have our ascending g sharp melodic minor scale so before we end just a brief recap whether you are calculating a melodic harmonic or just a natural minor scale always always always start by calculating the natural minor scale first you then have a choice first you can leave it as it is if you choose to convert it to a harmonic minor we merely raise the seventh note in both the ascending and descending scales if however you choose to convert it to a melodic minor we raise the sixth and seventh notes in only the ascending scale the descending scale does not change i really hope that this series of videos on minor scales has been useful to you many thanks for watching but please do drop me an email if you'd like me to cover any other music theory topics thanks for watching