Modal Families Beyond the Major Scale

Greek Modes showed that Dorian, Phrygian, and the rest aren't separate scales - they're the major scale's seven notes, started from different points. That's not a special property of the major scale. Any seven-note collection has seven rotations, each landing on a different note as tonic - the major scale's just happen to all have familiar Greek names. A few other collections have rotations well-known enough to have earned their own names too, and they're a different relationship from why a scale gets built in the first place: two scales can be deliberately constructed for different reasons and still turn out to be the same seven notes, rooted differently.

• Harmonic Minor family: Harmonic Minor ↔ Phrygian Dominant
• Harmonic Major family: Harmonic Major ↔ Mixolydian ♭2
• Double Harmonic family: Double Harmonic Major ↔ Hungarian Minor
• Melodic Minor family: seven jazz modes

Harmonic Minor Family: Harmonic Minor ↔ Phrygian Dominant

Rotate Harmonic Minor to start on its own 5th degree and you get Phrygian Dominant - the same seven notes, a perfect 5th away. It goes by several other names depending on the tradition it's cited from: Spanish Phrygian, Freygish in Klezmer music, Ahava Rabbah in Jewish liturgical music. (“Byzantine scale” is sometimes used for this one too, though that name is used inconsistently - some sources use it for Double Harmonic Major instead.) Whatever it's called, it's the same augmented-second gap Harmonic Minor has, just heard starting from a different note in the collection - which is why it carries the same exotic character even though nothing was rebuilt to get there.

Harmonic Major Family: Harmonic Major ↔ Mixolydian ♭2

Harmonic Major's 5th-degree rotation is Mixolydian ♭2 - a Mixolydian scale with its second degree flattened, carrying the same lowered-sixth augmented second as its parent, just relocated by starting the collection from a different note.

Double Harmonic Family: Double Harmonic Major ↔ Hungarian Minor

Double Harmonic Major's 4th-degree rotation turns out to be Hungarian Minor - not an obvious pairing, since the two are built by different edits of different parent scales. But C Double Harmonic Major (C, D♭, E, F, G, A♭, B) and F Hungarian Minor turn out to share the exact same seven notes - the same collection, reached by two unrelated-looking routes and rooted a perfect 4th apart.

Melodic Minor Family: Seven Jazz Modes

Melodic Minor has the most famous rotation family outside the major scale, mostly through jazz, where each of its seven modes has its own name and its own standard use against a specific chord type. Most of the seven aren't in the app yet - see Modes of Melodic Minor for the three most commonly used modes and their formulas.