How to Play Minor Scales on a Tuba

Video Transcript

"Hi, Kevin Smith back again, TubaLove, and next part of my practice session is minor scales. I just worked on some major scales. Minor scales are just as common as major scales in music. And just as important to learn. If you were to like when I do a minor scale, excuse me, a major scale they tend to be happy sounding, maybe triumphant sounding. Minor scales on the other hand tend to be sometimes sad sounding, or a little doleful, sometimes maybe a little bit ominous. But they, they convey a much different sense than a major scale does. Now, if I play again, I'm just going to play the C major scale again to give you the contrast. This is what a C major scale sound like. Now a C minor scale. You notice that sounds I think more sad somehow than that major scale does. That particular, there's three different types of minor scales. That one I just played is what's called a natural minor scale. And I don't have enough time to go into full detail. But what that entails is lowering the third of the scale, lowering the sixth and the seventh of the scale. And that makes the minor scale. So now you've got in a minor scale a whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step. And if you look at it compared to the major scale, you'd see the difference. That was the natural minor. There's a harmonic minor where's opposed to natural minor. Natural minor is, excuse me, harmonic minor. It raises the seventh up just to keep it centered a lot on what's called the tonic leading tone, gets you back to the melody. Lastly, there's a melodic minor scale. It raises the sixth and seventh like a major scale going up, but coming down. It lowers them again which is a lot of minor songs it just happen to be written with that with the melodic minor scale in mind. So that's your three kinds of melodic scales, natural, harmonic, and minor excuse me, natural, harmonic and melodic."