Melodic Minor Mapping Madness! (Part 1)

The Melodic Minor scale is one of the more challenging patterns for the guitar. The myriad of fingering possibilities make it a daunting task to develop a full command of this scale and its modes.

Using the Fretography® principle of fretboard symmetry and teasing out the symmetry of the scale itself, a few interesting patterns emerge that can be very useful in navigating the Melodic Minor landscape.

Fundamentally, Melodic Minor starts out as an alteration of the Aeolian Mode. Starting with the key of A minor, we raise the 6th and 7th, resulting in this group of notes: A B C D E F# G#. At first you may find it's easy enough to take a familiar minor scale pattern and just change the two notes, but you'll quickly realize that all your well practiced fingerings will have to be thrown out and you'll have to retrain your hand to 'instinctively' find these new note positions else it will be hit-or-miss when it comes to applying this scale effectively. 

There are many applications of Melodic Minor beyond the Tonic mode, and memorizing all seven modes with their many hand-position shifts takes great effort and time. As with any difficult pattern, it helps when you can find some aspect that can be easily visualized. On the fretboard, scales are inherently non-linear and the variations involving crossing between the 3rd and 2nd strings add even more complexity. But whenever symmetry is present in the theory of a musical structure, it can also be found on the fretboard if you know where to find it.

Playing scales is — ironically — not enough to be able to play scales. In other words; you need more than just scale patterns to visualize the structure of the Melodic Minor as it is arrayed across the whole fretboard.

Enter: "The Melodic Minor Compass" ...

This pattern is drawn from the notes of the Melodic Minor, but presents them as a set of arpeggios. The blue lines represent a Tritone arpeggio, the Orange line is an Augmented arpeggio. In addition, the green trapezoids are two modes: "D Lydian Dominant" and "F# Aeolian Flat5." These modes are emphasized because of their symmetrical relationship with the overall pattern. 

Below is a more elaborate look at the pattern as it is arrayed across the whole fretboard:

Play the indicated notes on the staves and experiment with finding your way around the pattern. Notice the gray notes ... these are the natural tones which are replaced by sharps. They can still be played when appropriate, but if you want to develop command of Melodic Minor you may want to avoid them until you've gotten the lay of the land in this new environment.

(Read Part 2)