Primary Natural Minor Scales - Upper String Scale Series #7
The first minor scales I teach are the natural minors. I begin these after I have taught the student the secondary yellow major scales. Just like the primary majors I begin with the scales that start on the open strings, starting with D-natural Minor (Figure 1). As described in the previous post I initially cover the parallel minor relationship instead of the relative, because the parallel makes more sense in terms of finger patterns. If it were simply a matter of discussing the music theory, most students can handle getting both at the same time, but adding both to discussion of fingerings and bowings and other violin matters can be an overload. So I will discuss the relative relationship later and then come back to the open string scales to reinforce the concept. In the case of D Minor I have the student play a D Major scale, then tell them that to make it minor we lower the third, sixth and seventh scale degrees. I have them identify which notes are which degrees and how it changes them, in this case F-sharp to F-natural, B to B-flat, and C-sharp to C-natural. Once they’ve identified these I have them tell me how it changes the red pattern. From this discussion we determine that the student needs to play a D scale with the blue and the green pattern. I have them go through it a few times to get used to the sound of the scale. Once the D Minor is comfortable I will have them play the A (Figure 2) and G Minors (Figure 3) with the same colors.
Once those are comfortable I will move up the fingerboard to the first finger scales. To figure out our new finger pattern colors I once again take them through the process of comparing the parallel major, starting with E (Figure 4 and 5), giving us red pattern on the lower string, and blue on the higher one. This is usually when I will bring up the relative relationship between keys. This is fairly easy to do now because of the one sharp in the key signature. I will use E Minor and the open string scales to reinforce the concept of relative scales.
From there I will move on to the B Minor (Figure 6) and low octave of A Minor (Figure 7). After those are comfortable we can put together our two octave A Minor with a sequence of red-blue-blue-green (Figure 8).
Next come the second finger scales. Due to resonance issues we have to cover the secondary major green scales before we can do the second finger minors. This is because the primary minor keys of B and F-sharp require their parallel majors in order to use our method of introduction. Otherwise we could work from the primary majors of B-flat and F, but those minor keys are much less resonant. After working those secondary major keys I start the minors with B (Figure 9 and 10) before moving to F-sharp (Figure 11). These second finger scales use the yellow and red patterns. Then comes the two octave B minor (Yellow-Red-Red-Blue) (Figure 12).
Moving onto the third finger scales I start with G Minor (Figures 13 and 14), then C Minor (Figure 15). For these scales the bottom string should be considered green in the context of the key. This prepares us to play the two octave G Minor. For both of the upper strings thinking yellow allows us to play these one octaves easily. Once those two are comfortable we can add in the two octave G Minor (blue-green-yellow-yellow) (Figure 16).
This completes all of the primary natural minor scales for first position. At this point I move on to the secondary blue major scales, and continue to review all of these naturals before moving on to melodic minor.