Electric Bass: F# Harmonic Minor Over the Changes

Where F# Harmonic Minor lies at this seat, and what a chorus takes out of it.

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

Dark and dramatic. The raised 7th pulls hard toward the tonic, and the wide step from the b6 up to it gives the scale an exotic, almost Middle-Eastern tension.

Heard in: Classical minor-key harmony, neoclassical metal (Yngwie Malmsteen), flamenco-tinged rock, klezmer, and Balkan melodies.

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.