Natural Minor Problem

I've been reading some more music theory, and even tho I thought I was sure about the natural and harmonic minor scales, I am confused. Lets say I play the C major scale, C-D-E-F-G-A-B, and wanna "convert" it to a minor. I'll have to lower the third, in this case E, so it becomes a Eb. Then my scale will look like this: C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B.

I was sure until a few minutes ago that C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B was the natural minor. But that cant be right, since the Harmonic minor scale is C-D-Eb-F-G-Ab-B, and the seventh on this scale is the raised key ( and the 6th aint lowered from A to Ab ). So if I lower the raised 7th to make it a natural minor again, the natural would suddenly look like C-D-Eb-F-Ab-Bb. But if a natural minor is C-D-Eb-F-G-Ab-Bb, then a major would be C-D-E-F-G-Ab-Bb, because to make a major minor you lower the third key, right?

And that again makes it just more confusing when trying to understand the ascending and descending melodic minor, that was the thing I aimed to learn and read about

hey victor.

To answer your question. Yes you lower the 3rd key to make something minor but you also have to lower the 6th and the 7th to bring it to a natural minor. A great example to demonstrate that scale would be A major.

3 Sharps. A B C# D E F# G# A is major
A B C D E F G A is natural minor

I think where you're getting "lower the 3rd to make it minor" from is that would be how you make a major triad a minor triad. When you're lowering the scale you have to lower 3, 6, and 7

I hope that helps!

PS the harmonic minor was created to give the 7th note a pull towards the tonic and create a leading tone. If you play the 7th note of a natural minor scale it's actually called a "Subtonic" as it has no pull since it's a whole tone away from the 8th note.

The Melodic minor was created to avoid playing the Augmented 2nd interval because it was a crime to sing this interval in music at one point in history. So when playing melodic passages that went up a scale they used the melodic minor to use a leading tone and still avoid the augmented 2nd (between the submediant and the leading tone). Make sense? I hope so!

Admin Andrew wrote:I think where you're getting "lower the 3rd to make it minor" from is that would be how you make a major triad a minor triad. When you're lowering the scale you have to lower 3, 6, and 7

Problem solved