Hi lee
I bought your book Guitar theory couple of week back and I found it very helpful in widening my knowledge about the guitar theory …. Let me just come straight to the point ….. I have a question to ask about minor 6 triad … why is the 6th note on the minor traid Formula not flat like the 3rd and the 7th … according to what I understand Natural minor scale has 3rd 6th and 7th flat right … so if we follow that formula than the 6th on the minor traid should be flat too ….
Can you please explain that ….
Thanks
Can you give me a bit more info. What part of the book does this relate to?
I’m a bit lost where you are getting “minor 6 triad” from. Minor 6 chords would have four notes so therefore won’t be a triad.
If I’m understanding you correctly then there’s probably some confusion between minor and major chord formulas. The thing to remember is that all formulas relate to the major scale, whether they are major, minor, diminished or whatever, they all take their formula relative to the major scale.
In the key of C major we have the following notes
C D E F G A B (formula numbers 1 to 7)
The natural minor scale has the formula 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7. If we apply this formula to the notes in C major we get …
C D Eb F G Ab Bb
Major triad chord formula is 1 3 5 (C E G)
Minor triad chord formula is 1 b3 5 (C Eb G)
Major 6th chord formula = 1 3 5 6 (C E G A)
Minor 6th chord formula = 1 b3 5 6 (C Eb G A)
My guess is you are trying to apply minor formulas to minor scales, which is where you might be misunderstanding. All chord and scale formulas should relate the major. In other words, let’s say the C minor scale notes are as follows
C D Eb F G Ab Bb
These notes have already been created from the formula applied to the major notes so they would no longer need to be “re-formulated” if that makes sense?
Relative to C major we would still number these notes as 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7
We could if we wanted to number the notes in the minor scale. If we did this then we’d just number them 1 to 7 without the b3, b6, b7 because the notes have already been flattened. In this case the minor triad relative to the minor scale would just be 1 3 5 because the 3rd is already flat.
This would just end up confusing and having to learn different formulas for each scale type.
Sometimes we get some overlap where things aren’t clear but this often has to just be thought out. For example someone might say “the third in C minor” or “the flat third in C minor”. We just need to assume they are talking about the same note.
Hope that helps, if not try me again. This stuff is fairly straightforward when you understand it but I can still remember the frustration when I was trying to make sense of it all.
