A quick question on scales/keys

Hey all, I'm a bit confused about keys. More specifically how scales fit with keys. I've read Bodom's lesson on keys and thats fine for major and minor scales. Perhaps i am missing something but what about, for instance, minor melodic and minor harmonic scales? For example if you're playing a C harmonic minor scale: C D Eb F G Ab B C how would you know what key would that be in?

That would be in the key of C.

Correction - that would be in the key of C minor (let's not get sloppy here mmkay?!)

Harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are both contained within minor keys; uh-oh, I feel a very brief theory lesson coming on...

In any chord or scale, the note that determines whether it has a major or minor tonality is the 3rd. Minor keys/scales/chords use minor 3rds, major keys/scales/chords use major 3rds - makes sense yeah?

Therefore, melodic and harmonic minor (the clue's in the name) fall into minor keys. They do not have their own dedicated keys if that's what you're thinking (you may well not have been, but it was a possibility).

Hope that helps make a bit more sense, and don't worry if it doesn't; this sorta stuff used to confuse the sh!t out of me when I was starting out.

Afro

i don't like putting in minor or major due too music not really being minor or major now. like it was before in older times. As John Cage said music of the 20 century is more about Consonance and dissonance.

@Afro
I'm just going to put this out there you like classical music a hell of a lot huh vs lets say jazz.

Well to be honest RA, although I respect classical music and the compositional techniques involved, I definitely favour jazz over classical. At first it was the other way around, I just didn't 'get' jazz at all, but I soon found that classical music (and I'm talking in terms of genre rather than period here) became quite boring because there are so many ridiculous rules to follow, whereas jazz is obviously the complete opposite of that. I've only been listening to jazz for about 18 months now, and only been majorly interested for about 12 - I'm going through a real Joe Pass phase at the moment, just can't get enough of it!

Afro

But now it's down to the musician themselves to abide by these rules. I love both genres and, like you, grew bored of the rules in Classical. But then why not just break them and perhaps merge it with Jazz? Music always gets boring if it's the same.

it just seems you always have a classical approach to things witch makes sense if you start strong there. were i started in jazz(American theory in general, blues and such) and then started to apply what i liked from classical.

@ RA

welllll okay; not so much @ RA as at this idea that Jazz/"Classical"/Rock-etc-etc musics have different approaches to basic 'Theory'

'they' may come from many places but all drink from the same well, ...imnsho


RAWK!
Cs