Scale comparisons
Pick a pair. We'll show you the interval-pattern diff, the shared notes, and a one-line on when to use which.
The bright-vs-dark backbone of Western tonality. Same notes when paired as relatives — but the tonic shifts the colour entirely.
Both add the leading tone to natural minor; only melodic minor also raises the 6th. The classical / jazz divide.
Same minor tonality; harmonic minor raises the 7th for the leading-tone pull. The augmented 2nd is the giveaway.
Classical melodic minor ascends with raised 6th + 7th, descends as natural minor — same scale, two patterns.
Identical going up, divergent coming down. Classical melodic minor reverts to natural minor; jazz minor keeps the raised 6 + 7 in both directions.
Five-note relatives — same notes, different tonic. The minor pentatonic owns blues / rock vocabulary; the major owns country / pop hooks.
Blues adds one note — the ♭5 'blue note' — to minor pentatonic. The six-note set unlocks slide-guitar and bent-string vocabulary.
Major pentatonic + the ♭3 chromatic passing tone. Country, rockabilly, bluegrass.
Both minor; Dorian raises the 6th. Compare 'So What' vs 'House of the Rising Sun' to hear the difference.
Identical except for one note — Dorian's raised 6th. That single semitone is the modal-jazz colour.
Major with a lowered 7th. The dominant-seventh vibe of folk, blues-rock, and Celtic music.
Phrygian lowers the 2nd. Spanish flamenco, modal jazz, and metal lean on the ♭2 → ♮1 resolution.
Major with a raised 4th — the bright floating mode. Film-score and prog-rock vocabulary.
Phrygian dominant raises the 3rd. Flamenco vs metal: same root, the major 3rd is the bridge to Spanish vocabulary.
Phrygian dominant is the 5th mode of harmonic minor — same parent scale, different tonic. Spanish vs Eastern European emphasis.
Lydian dominant adds the raised 4th to Mixolydian. Modal jazz over altered V7.
Two melodic-minor modes that both work over V7alt. Altered handles bIIalt substitution; Lydian dominant handles unaltered V7.
Every semitone vs every whole-step. Twelve notes vs six. Total density vs symmetric ambiguity.
Both symmetric; whole-tone uses six notes evenly spaced, augmented alternates m3 + half-step. Debussy vs Coltrane.
The two octatonic 'diminished' scales. Half-whole works over dominant 7; whole-half works over diminished 7.
Bebop dominant adds the major-7 chromatic passing tone. The Charlie Parker line over V7.
Bebop major inserts the ♭6 chromatic passing tone. Eight notes that swing naturally over maj7.
Major with a lowered 6th — the IV / iv6 colour borrowed from minor. Romantic-era harmony staple.
Both have augmented seconds, but doubled harmonic adds a second one on the ♭2 → 3 step. Klezmer / Arabic flavour.
Hungarian minor = harmonic minor with #4. Two augmented seconds; Eastern European Gypsy vocabulary.
Both five-note minor scales. Hirajoshi (1 2 ♭3 5 ♭6) sounds distinctly Japanese; minor pentatonic (1 ♭3 4 5 ♭7) is the universal pop / blues set.
Two Japanese shamisen scales. In Sen (1 ♭2 4 5 ♭7) is the urban, melancholic colour; Yo (1 2 4 5 6) is the bright country counterpart.
Standard Locrian has a ♭6; Locrian ♮6 raises it. The 2nd mode of harmonic minor works over m7♭5 chords more naturally.
Lydian + raised 5. The 3rd mode of melodic minor; jazz-fusion's signature 'floating' tonality.
Both have ♭2 + ♭6 + ♮7. Persian adds ♭5; doubled harmonic keeps the ♮5. Two Middle-Eastern colours one semitone apart.