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Harmonic Minor Scale Patterns
More Harmonic Minor Scale Patterns
A harmonic minor scale pattern was included in last week's batch of guitar licks. Last week's Octave Displacement A7 Guitar Lick used an octave displacement technique. More octave displacement ideas have been included in this week's guitar lick videos as I felt inspired by the creation of last week's idea.
When To Use Harmonic Minor Scale
So you've learnt some cool harmonic minor scale licks... When can you use them?
The harmonic minor scale is a great sound and can create some amazing eastern-sounding melodies.
The standard way to use the harmonic minor scale is when a 7th chord is functioning as the v7 chord in a minor key. Many guitar songs are in the key of A minor and will contain an E7 chord. This is a great time to bring out your arsenal of harmonic minor scale licks. There are so many examples of songs in which you can use this idea. Evenly though stylistically not accurate, you can have some serious fun exploring the harmonic minor scale in these types of situations.
Once you have mastered the sound that the harmonic minor scale creates, you can use it to create cool eastern-sounding effects in so many places. Vamping on a 7th chord? Give the harmonic minor scale a try. Be careful not to overdo it and lose the gig due to not playing the sounds expected for that genre. It's worth the risk though!
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Octave Displacement E7 Guitar Lick
This harmonic minor scale pattern is simply an ascending harmonic minor scale with octave displacement applied. The line moves up the guitar fingerboard nicely, although it will require a good picking technique to play the lick cleanly.
Certain parts of the lick will also require attention to left-hand fingering otherwise, your fingers will trip over themselves. Licks such as this one are a great warm-up routine to wake up your hands and get them synced together.
Octave Displacement G7 Guitar Lick
Another crazy-sounding, octave displaced harmonic minor scale lick to give you a good workout.
The ideas for these types of licks are usually quite basic and are simply ascending and descending scales with notes played in various different octaves. They are great fun to play and will probably give you a good challenge (or a great deal of frustration).
A7 Harmonic Minor Guitar Lick
You can never have enough harmonic minor scale licks in my opinion. Not only do they sound great on electric guitar, but they also sound amazing when played on acoustic guitar. The combination of a driving acoustic guitar rhythm playing harmonic minor scale-based harmonies, with fast, shredding harmonic minor scale runs played over the top is so satisfying to play.
Be sure to try this, and all the harmonic minor scale ideas on a steel-string acoustic guitar if you have one. Amazing fun!
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