D Minor Scales & Arpeggio

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and in this lesson we're going to be learning how to play scales and arpeggios in the key of D minor.
Let's come to the piano to get started.
There are lots of great, famous pieces written in the key of D minor.
Going back a few hundred years to one of my favorite composers Johann Sebastian Bach, we have this famous toccata in D minor.
Or from more recent years, we have the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean also in D minor.
D minor can be an exciting and dramatic key.
Let's look at how it's built.
Remember that every major key has what's called a relative minor.
When you are a relative key, that means you share the same key signature.
On our ladder of fourths, we've recently learned about the key of F major with one flat.
F major's relative on the ladder is D minor, also with one flat.
So here are all the pitches from the key of F major, and how do you find the relative minor?
Well, it's always the skip of a third below.
So again, the relative of F major is D minor, and you'll notice it's the same diatonic pitches.
We still have that B-flat, one flat, and all the other keys are white.
This is the D natural minor scale. Let's try to play it.
Our fingering for the left hand will be what we're used to from other scales. We'll go 5 4 3 2 1 3 2 1.
Then coming down, 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5.
The right hand also uses our standard fingering that we've learned before. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5. Coming down is 5 4 3 2 1 3 2 1
Will you go ahead and press pause and try the D natural minor scale using both your left hand and then try it with your right hand.
Be careful to use the correct fingering, and then press play to go on.
Now, you might remember from back when we learned the A minor scale, that there's both a natural and harmonic minor scale. We just learned the D natural minor scale. To turn natural minor into harmonic,
you take the seventh note and raise it a half step, like this.
So this is the D harmonic minor scale.
Again, we just took that seventh note, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. It's always the note just a step below the starting note or tonic,
and you raise it a half step.
So now we'll have these two keys that are black in a row.
A B-flat and a C-sharp.
this is D harmonic minor.
To play that, it will look like this. We have 5 4 3 2 1, then as you cross over finger 3, finger 2 has to come up to the C-sharp.
So we have B-flat, C-sharp, D.
It gives us that nice exotic sound of harmonic minor.
In the right hand it's also the same fingering as before. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5
You'll feel a bit of a stretch there between fingers 3 and 4.
for harmonic minor.
So now press pause once again, and I'd like you to try the harmonic, D harmonic minor scale.
Try it with your right hand and with your left hand, then press play to go on.
Now let's look at the D minor arpeggio.
Remember that the arpeggio is built on a I chord, and then to make it a one octave arpeggio we'll add our tonic note at the top. So we have DO
ME SO DO on top.
Our left hand fingering is 5 4 2 1 2 4 5,
and the right hand fingering is 1 2 3 5 3 2 1.
Now go ahead and press pause and try the arpeggios on your own, and then press play to go on.
Now that you know the D minor scale and arpeggio, let's improvise with D minor.
Today I'm going to ask you to improvise a melody in D minor.
Use the D natural minor scale. We're going to use natural minor today,
and what I'd like to do is start off with, I'll provide the accompaniment, and we'll start off kind of mellow.
but then as the improvisation progresses, we'll get to a more lively section.
Okay, so try to match the mood of your melody that you're improvising with what you hear in the accompaniment so we can make some really good music together.
So, use the entire one octave scale
as you improvise, and if you get bored of one area on the piano, feel free to take it up an octave.
Take it wherever you feel the music telling you to go.
Here we go. Start improvising whenever you feel it's the right time.
Nice work.
Please feel free to rewind and improvise along with that accompaniment as many times as you like.
Or, let me show you how you can add your own chords to your own improvisation.
I was just using the same chord progression through the entire improvisation.
I was using a I chord,
and then a major VII chord, so I just go down a step from D minor down to C, C major, and you could just use an open V chord in your left hand.
D and A down to C and G,
and then B-flat and F. That's our vi chord, back to the major VII chord. See how I'm just doing open fifths?
D and A, C and G, B-flat and F, then back to C and G, and just repeat that as you improvise a melody.
See how you can just,
you're playing basically any white key you want except for B becomes B- ...