Recently, a student sent me a screenshot of the response he received from a Google search on the formula of an F# Hungarian minor scale. Below is the AI generated answer.
You can see that the F# Hungarian minor scale is given as:
F# G# A C C# D F
This is completely wrong, misleading and causes confusion. The actual spelling is this:
F# G# A B# C# D E#
Can you see the difference? The Google supplied answer has two notes repeated twice, C and C# and F and F#. The fundamental rule in understanding scales and music in general is that a scale always has one of each letter, unless there are more than seven notes in a scale. When the correct notes are present, the structure of the scale becomes easily observable. For example, the fourth in any F# scale is B, and the fact that the note here is B# means we have a #4.
Again, the seventh in an F# scale is an E# for Major 7th, and E for minor 7th, so this clearly has a Major 7th. Remember, the Hungarian minor is often used to create a V – V – I to a Harmonic minor scale via its #4, which is hidden with the AI answer. So explaining the scale with enharmonic equivalents of C and F completely obfuscates the alterations and therefore functions of the scale in one simple step.
There are also other mistakes in the Artificial Ignorance post. The Double Harmonic scale is actually mode V of the Hungarian minor and as such is not a scale in its own right. Secondly, there are two Gypsy scales, Gypsy and Gypsy minor, both names used for either the Hungarian minor or its Double Harmonic mode. I completely avoid using these terms as they are confusing, easily mixed up and explain nothing about the formulae of the scales themselves.
My advice on this topic: music theory is totally unreliable on Google and AI generated responses, therefore, get yourself a music theory library as soon as possible, I have.
Thanks for reading.
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