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Just doing some practice on minor scales. When I play minor scales, should I just know off the top of my head what the relative major scale is and then play the notes, or should I see the minor scale as its own scale pattern (ie W, H, W, W, H, W, W) and not even think about the relative major?
Note: I'm mainly focusing on natural minor.
You don't practice scales in a spirit of harmonic analysis. You practice them to gain fluency. Work out the notes any way you want. Then get them fast and clean!
Yes, I think it is useful to know the relative major when practicing the minor scale, and not think of each scale as a separate pattern.
I have found that students do well when they begin to see the overall pattern of whole and half steps in the system, and and realize that the scale is determined by which tone in the pattern they are focusing on.
I think that understanding Modes becomes easier for some students when taking this approach as well.
You should know the connection between the minor scale you're playing and its relative major, but treat them as different. Since you are mainly focusing on natural minor the two might seem like the same thing, but the most common type of minor, harmonic minor, and also melodic minor are definitely different.
While it is useful to know the relationships between relative major and minor keys, your fingers don't care. I would not recommend that you use the same fingers on the same keys as you do on the relative major, starting a minor third lower, for your minor scales. (If that is what you are asking.) Minor scales have their usual fingerings, just as major scales do. Also, as others have said, the natural minor scale isn't the only one.
Most people practice the harmonic and melodic minor scales, as these often come up in music. The harmonic minor scale raises the 7th degree a half step to provide a leading tone. The melodic minor scale raises the 6th and 7th scale degrees a half step going up, and drops them again (uses the natural minor scale) going down.
If you want to see the usual fingerings of all the scales, you can find them here, starting on page 50.
The minor scale you're considering is the natural minor, also known as Aeolian mode and descending classical melodic minor.
Of course it's better to think along the lines of its relative major, which is already known. In itself, it's used often while a piece is in a major key, to modulate into, seamlessly.
The other minors - harmonic and melodic - use some changed notes, which again can be seen to be related to other scales.
The harmonic only changes the leading note from the natural, so there's a semitone between the 7th and 8th notes. That gives a tone and a half gap between 6 and 7, which is 'compensated' for in the rising classical melodic, by also raising the 6th note. But if you know the natural and harmonic minor scales, it's just a matter of adapting the changed notes, which should make more sense than thinking along the lines of 'it's a completely new set of notes' - which it isn't.
You could also have the same mindset with modes, which use the same notes again as the major scale, but start and finish on other notes rather than the major root. As in D Dorian is an 'extension' of C major.
I agree with @LaurencePayne 's answer:
You don't practice scales in a spirit of harmonic analysis. You practice them to gain fluency. Work out the notes any way you want. Then get them fast and clean!
( Personally, I used an algorithmic/modal approach to scales and thought of variations as exceptions to the standard algorithms - there is already plenty of terminology out there to help - terms like Lydian Dominant or Locrian #2 or the Altered Scale. Eventually, the common ones became automatic. I'm not a full time pro - often enough I have think about things as I play, if it's not something commonplace. )
But I'll add this:
I don't think of natural minor as the relative minor of its major scale. I think that puts too much emphasis on the very conventional and not particularly relevant "Major vs Minor" mindset, which in modern music has been obliterated, IMO.
I think of natural minor simply as the 6th mode - Aeolian - the mode built on the 6th degree - of the Ionian "base" mode, known commonly as "The Major Scale": IMO, in modern music it's valid say that "all modes are equal", (although having a base mode still puts emphasis on major and there are good reasons for that) and we also find many scales in use - harmonic and melodic minor, various pentatonic scales, bebop scales... - that aren't modes or relative major or minor to anything. (And what's without touching on other systems that are also becoming part of our musical vocabulary - Indian music for example.) In fact, the natural minor, Aeolian mode, occurs infrequently relative to those others.
So - why bind yourself to the "Major vs Minor" mindset implied by Major and Relative Minor, or vice-versa? It's not the correct way to think about contemporary music.
Old post, but...
Just doing some practice on minor scales...Note: I'm mainly focusing on natural minor.
This is probably the more important point, rather than relative major/minor scales.
In terms of the major/minor system of harmony, there really isn't any music in a key of "natural minor." So practicing only natural minor will not adequately help prepare you for playing in minor keys.
You should practice scales with a sense of minor key harmony and use the various forms of raised/lowered ^6 and ^7 scale degrees, which will give you the various natural, harmonic, and melodic minor scales.
That will better reflect how minor scales are actually found in minor key music.
Getting back to the question of relative keys/scales. If the idea was that somehow knowing a major scale made playing the relative minor scale already covered by practicing major scales, you should see the mistake in that idea. In other words, something like: "I know how to play C major, so that means I already know how to play A minor, because all the pitches are the same." That's wrong.
Minor key music, minor key scales, don't work that way. You will need to learn to handle the ^6 and ^7 scale degrees flexibly. In the case of C major/A minor that will be the F and G natural changing to F♯ and G♯.
As an ultimate goal, we want to be able to think "I want to play an Fm scale" and the scale should be right under our fingers. We think "Let me play some notes of a Bbm scale now" and immediately our hand plays the right notes in any order. However, although a Bbm scale is a scale "derived" from the Db major scale, it has emphasis placed on Bb (and the other notes from Bb chord) and not on Db (This is part of the ingredients of a scale: a center of tonal gravity + a formula for subsequent notes. The first concept is not easily understood right away by beginners). So, when you think about the Bbm scale, your hand should visualize "Bb related notes" and if you need to make the brief mathematical analysis "What is the major scale from which Bbm is derived? Hm, it's Db. Ok, let me play the notes of Db but emphasizing the Bbm chord", then there is an unnecessary wasting of brain power.
Let me quote Gary Burton in a MOOC Berklee Coursera course (if you change Bm7b5 for Am, that's your question):
"Often students will ask this question about the seven modes: Since the same notes are used for seven mode scales (the B Locrian uses the same notes as the C Ionian, and so on), can we just think of the C Ionian, a more familiar scale, when we see a Bm7b5 chord symbol?
The answer is no. The reason the chord symbol is spelled as a Bm7b5 instead of a C major is to point us to the strongest notes, the chord tones, of the B minor harmony. The chord symbol is telling us more information than just the notes in the scale.
If the symbol says B minor something, then you will want to picture it, and think of it as B minor. If you have to first think of it as C major to find the scale notes, it creates an extra step in your thought process and distracts you from focusing on the important notes in the B minor harmony."
As an intermediate step, I am a proponent of learning 2 worlds that will serve as a basis for all basic structures: major and minor worlds. If you learn the G major scale, immediately learn Em and associate Em with the same key signature, although as a separate entity. Don't think of Em as a E scale with b3,b6,b7 and also don't use this kind of half-whole formulas (it's cumbersome if you want to skip notes). The idea of keeping these 2 scales in mind has the benefit of learning easily lots of other scales, changing just a few notes. If you want to practice the dorian scale, start with a minor scale and raise the 6th degree. If you want to practice the lydian scale, start with a major scale and raise the 4th degree. Most scales will be categorized as a part of the "minor world" or "major world". You can use a more fine-grained categorization and add the "diminished world", "dominant world", etc ... but now I digress :p
It is a good technique to know the minor scales fast but I reccommend you to really know the minor. It will be a lot harder and much more time to take but I think it would benifit you more if you know the relative but sticking more to the traditional way. You could combine them both, though. Anyway that is just my opinion. Do what you feel would suit you more and help you when it comes to music.
