The 1st chord that a melodic minor scale works on is a dominant seventh chord, let's take a look. The difference though is that the relationship of the scale of the chord is a fifth away. If I am playing C melodic minor, this is the chord that's going to work over F and I am going down that fifth. The other way to look at it is, if you have an F dominant seventh you need to play, such as in the middle of a 2-5-1 or even just a 2-5 and a chart. You want to go up a fifth and then play the melodic minor, it's that easy.
I have just introduced melodic minor as C. It's not a coincidence. It's going to work on this chord. We have got C, D, Eb, let's cross under to the F, G, A, E, C. Let's integrate this a little bit as well; we have done upper structure before on this chord. If you remember upper structure was putting triads or fore-note ideas, over a left hand voicing. You have got F dominant seventh; we had G major before, which was one of the choices. Remember, one of the triads you can put over a dominant seventh chord is to go up a whole step from the root. That's a G and play a major triad. We did arpeggios earlier on in the DVD as well, guess what? That scale works right along with that G.
You could play part of the melodic minor; you could arpeggiate it. So, here's the melodic minor scale over to F7 again, C, D, Eb, F, G, A, E, C.
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