Harmonic And Melodic Minor Modes Names Options

[K1R]

I was reading some material about improvising over dominant7 chords when I saw a Mixolydian b13 b9 scale. When I took a closer look on it, I realised that it is the fifth mode of Harmonic Minor scale. Well, since Harmonic Minor scale is a minor scale, shouldn't Mixolydian b13 b9 be called Phrygian #3 instead? At first name "Mixolydian" led me into missunderstanding about where the mode had come from...
Mixolydian b13 (or b6) is the 5th mode of Melodic Minor scale, so shouldn't it be called Phrygian #2 #3 as well?

P.S. I've found these scales in our Scale generator as Phrygian Major Scale (Mixolydian b13 b9) and Mixolydian flat 6 (Mixolydian b13 (or b6)).

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This post has been edited by K1R: Dec 25 2012, 12:23 PM

[The Professor]

Very fun mode for 7th chords, with a few names that makes it confusing. There's a system of scale names in the jazz world that compares all HM modes to their related major modes. It's great for learning the HM modes as you just alter any major mode you know by one note and you get the related HM mode.

Here are the names if you want to check them out.

HM 1 = Aeolian #7
HM 2 = Locrian #6
HM 3 = Ionian #5
HM 4 = Dorian #4
HM 5 = Phrygian #3
HM 6 = Lydian #2
HM 7 = Mixolydian #1


There's a similar system for naming MM modes that relates them back to major modes with only one note different between the MM mode and related major mode.

MM 1 = Ionian b3
MM 2 = Dorian b2
MM 3 = Phrygian b1
MM 4 = Lydian b7
MM 5 = Mixolydian b6
MM 6 = Aeolian b5
MM 7 = Locrian b4

Those names don't really describe the chords that they produce, but they help learn the HM and MM modes rather quickly as you can just adjust the 7 major modes by one note to create these other scale systems.

Might be worth checking out.

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