The Harmonic Minor as a Pair of Augmented and Diminished Arpeggios
In the Encyclopoedia I advocate experimenting with the arpeggios that common scales contain as a way of both understanding the scale better and making your playing more interesting. Here we look at the two symmetrical arpeggios that are embedded in the common Harmonic Minor scale.
The Harmonic Minor contains an augmented triad built and a diminished seventh arpeggio, both built on the 7. Here's how they sound played one after the other:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |--------------5--9--6----------------------------------9--13--\12--9-------------------------- A-----------5-----------7----------------------------9-----------------10---------------------- |--------6-----------------9--6------------------10------------------------12--9--------------- B-----7--------------------------8-----------11-----------------------------------11----------- |--8--------------------------------10--/12----------------------------------------------------
These two arpeggios cover the entire scale except for the root, which is usually being stated by the music you're playing over anyway. Hence they sketch out the whole Harmonic Minor sound; you can, of course, add in the root at any time you like.
Here's an E-shaped CAGED fingering for the Harmonic Minor, with augmented triad notes in black and diminished notes in red. The small white notes are the roots:
Here's a lick that works very like the first one but changes between the arpeggios more quickly and stays entirely within the fingering just given. It ends by resolving to the root:
T--------------------------8--7--4------------------------------------------------------------- |-----------------6--5--9-----------6---------------------------------------------------------- A-----------4--7-----------------------7--5---------------------------------------------------- |--------6-----------------------------------6------------------------------------------------- B-----7-----------------------------------------7--5------------------------------------------- |--8--------------------------------------------------7--4--5----------------------------------
Finally, here's a simple tapping pattern using the two arpeggios from A Harmonic Minor -- I'll play it through slowly but with practice you could get this up to a pretty high speed:
T--t12--4--8--t12-/13--7--10--t13-------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you did want to work with this kind of approach it would be well worth practicing the same idea on all six strings and in different keys so that you can use it improvisationally.
