Electric Bass: C# Melodic Minor Over the Changes

C# Melodic Minor runs 7 notes to the octave, laid out here on EADG with every C# flagged. Mid-chorus the pattern is not what you need; where the root is when the chord changes underneath you is.

Minor at the bottom, major at the top — the b3 keeps it minor while the natural 6 and 7 lift the upper half into a smooth climb home. Bittersweet rather than dark, with a polished, modern-jazz sheen.

Heard in: Jazz lines over minor and altered chords, film scoring, and classical melodies rising to the tonic — Bach, Mozart, and bebop alike.

The electric bass can hold a note long enough for it to be heard as a choice rather than a step, so a scale here is read for its strong tones first and its passing tones second.

Play it slowly against the audio until it stops being a shape, then put it over two bars of a form and let the chord tones decide which of the notes you actually keep.