Mar 122010
My students are currently learning the song ‘Nature Boy’
We are doing it in D Minor (F Major). The chords begin D Minor/EMinor7 b5/A7.
If we look at the chords contained within DMinor/FMajor we find these:
DMinor7/Eminor7 b5/FMajor7/ GMinor7/ A Minor 7/ Bb Major7/ C7/
As we can see our chord progression is forming a I II V progression in D Minor except we can see that instead of the V chord being A Minor7 the tune uses an A7 chord instead.
This A7 chord is outside the notes of D Minor/FMajor.
In D Minor/Fmajor the dominant chord is an A Minor7. In order for this chord to function harmonically as a true dominant, the third (ie. C the leading note of the scale) has to be raised by a semitone (to C# ) forming A7 (notes=A C# E G)
By playing this dominant chord it alters the C to a C# in the minor scale to form the harmonic minor:
On the guitar the scales look like this:
(Click on image to see full size)
I suggest when soloing over this progression you use either D Pentatonic scale, D Dorian or D Minor (F Major) over the D Minor scale and then play D Harmonic minor over the E Minor7 b5 and A7 .
D Dorian moving to D Harmonic Minor
