At 9:29 AM -0400 4/19/12, bill sinclair wrote: >Actually, for G harmonic minor you would use B flat and F sharp. >For melodic minor, you would use just E flat, >and for the "natural" minor, use B and E flat. > >When you say G minor, there is a lot of ambiguity, since there are 3 >possible choices. >That's why I think it's better NOT to give it a name.
Actually for melodic minor you use E natural and F# ascending, F natural and Eb descending. And yes, the ambiguity is what makes minor keys more interesting and "richer" than major keys--which baroque composers certainly knew perfectly well. Plus, of course, they often notated minor keys with one less flat that we now consider "proper," since the tradition was to treat them as transposed Dorian mode. So they actually added MORE accidentals than we would. But for playing in notes, G minor definitely needs both Eb and F# available, and not D# or Gb as defaults. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
