What's so harmonic about the harmonic minor scale?

[koganbot]

Mark, or someone, why is the harmonic minor scale called the harmonic minor scale? How is it any more harmonic than the natural minor scale? Wikip:

"One More Day" is composed in the key of A harmonic minor, meaning though in A minor, it has a G#, an accidental, at the end of the chorus and the end of the second verse. The vocals span around an octave and a half, from C4 to E5. It is written in verse-chorus form, with a bridge section in a rap-form, featuring Sung Hyo Ram from XCROSS as the guest rapper, before the last repeated chorus.

Watch on YouTube

Wikip explains "harmonic" in the name like this:

The scale is so named because it is a common foundation for harmonies (chords) used in a minor key. For example, in the key of A minor, the V chord (the triad built on the note E) is normally a major triad that includes the raised seventh degree of the scale: G♯, as opposed to the unraised G♮ which would make a minor triad.

What confuses me about this explanation is that it assumes that, if your i is a minor, then V is somehow more "harmonic" than v is. (That is, that the major chord that's a fifth above the chord that establishes the key is, when the key is minor, more "harmonic" than the minor chord that's the fifth above the original chord.) Now I get that Wikip is saying that the major V is more "normal" or "common" than the minor v. (Where? Among whom?) Is that because it's — somehow — more harmonically related? Is it because of that "leading-tone" business Wikip mentions?

Here's a natural (rather than harmonic) minor for the v, which sounds fine to me:

Watch on YouTube

So does this:

Watch on YouTube

[EDIT: For the record, those are Tapper Zukie's original "Simpleton Badness" from Man Ah Warrior and Sistar's "Alone."]

Yes, I'm never likely to master music theory. Other stuff is taking my time.

Another reason for this post is that you — especially you who are named "Mark" — may enjoy the ChoColat track for how its harpsichord and melody recall the classic She'kspere/Kandi days of TLC, Destiny's Child, and Pink. Maybe you, more than I, will be able to explain what the melody has in common with those melodies of yore (if I'm right that it does).

Comments

[koganbot]

But why the V (rather than the v) in the first place? Do you agree with Josh as to why the V is considered more "harmonic" than the v? Mind you, the V sounds real good when ChoColat* do it. But the v sounds real good when Tapper Zukie and Sistar do it. (The ChoColat does seem to "go somewhere" melodically in a way that "Simpleton Badness" and "Alone" don't. Those two are after a different effect.)

*The songwriters are Jean T. Na and Jenny Hyun, both American, I think.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

My piano brain went "something something pre-well tempered clavier," so I'm glad that Mark saved me some of the research there. I think "natural" is "natural" just because it predated harmonic as an easy possibility in teaching music on a keyboard instrument.

I imagine there are plenty of places where the "natural" scale is not the one that is actually natural to the idiom. Not sure about this, but I think that Jewish prayers are usually sung in harmonic minor, as opposed to the V-i or V-I "Amen" in Christian music.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I think I got confused in my final paragraph there -- something seems off about it. But I am struck by the emphasis on the raised seventh in some Jewish prayers I've heard. One thing that's tough about pop music is that often it's being played in modes that aren't always obvious -- in order to know what mode the song is in, or whether it's natural or harmonic minor (etc.) you have to hit certain notes that identify it. In the Sistar song, there's the obvious reliance on the minor V, but other songs are less obvious. "Toxic" comes to mind for some reason. That might also be because the not-raised seventh is also a blue note, along with the tritone. (The tritone -- a raised fourth -- gives the string run its edge in "Toxic.") So you can play with the natural/harmonic scale notes interchangeably in most songs.