Harmonic and Melodic Minor Scale guitar fretboard positioning excercise

As an example for those special interested here's a harmonic minor scale rehearsing example. It´s a little tricky since it's a 1- ½ - 1 - 1 - ½- 1½ - ½ interval step progression. It´s also kind of tricky playing since you sometimes need to strech the fingers over 5 frets on the guitar. Maybe you find some more clever positioning system, this is just as an advice. Harmonic Minor gives you a little of latin feel, and is also widely used in flamenco improvisation.

Harmonic minor could aslo be suitable for a (2th)m7 - (5th)7(-9) - (1th)maj chord progression or for example Dm7 - A7(-9) - Cmaj chord progression.

Melodic minor contains intervals 1 ½ - 3 ½ (1- ½ - 1 - 1 - 1- 1 - ½) and is partly used in (neo)classical music and jazz improvisation. It´s especially useful in jazz blues chord progressions. For instanse playing chords like over E7 - A7(-9) -B7. Here a melodic minor scale of B would be suitable. A7(-9) means a A7 chord containing the -9 tone counted from base tone of the chord. This kind of progression is widely used in jazz music, the (5th)7(-9) chord giving additional spice. For A7 chord the -9 means the tone A#(Ais)or augmented B (bB).

In the case of a 2-5-1 progression, the melodic minor scale starting from 6th tone from base chord will be used. In case of a progression ending on Cmaj, a B melodic minor scale might be used, since it contains A#(Ais).

The numbering in the figure "1", "2", "3" and "4" is just basically showing an suggestion for fingering system. Like "1" meaning index finger, "2" is finger, "3" is ring finger, "4" is the little finger.