Originally posted by Tweak
[B]Hi all,
this has proberbly been asked here many times before. Got afairly straight forward Q that i think counts as a technique / theory one;

Ive started spending time learning about scales and modes and have got confused. If a song is in the key of B minor, and has a chord pattern something like Bm G D (proberbly as 'power chords') and i want to solo over it am i right in thinking the following:

1. notes from the Bm scale (melodic or harmonic) should work ove rany chord as long as they are carefully chosen with respect to the chord at that time

Yeah. Although I would chose the harmonic minor scale over the melodic. One reason is G in the melodic minor is raised to G#, when in the harmonic minor scale all chord tones are represented. You could use either but judge by what your gonna be doing; if your soloing the harmonic minor is always a good choice, if your writting a melody than use the melodic. It's that simple.

2. (and this is my main Q) The relative major of Bm is D, so if on the Bm chord i wibble around with notes from D Aeolian mode which starts on a B, and do the same for the G chord but using whicever mode starts on a G and for the D chord whichever mode of D starts on a D (the ionian?) will it all sound ok? Will i need to alter any other notes to make it fit in with the minor kind of sound? AS far as i can see the modes are still all major..

Why do you want to confuse yourself? The chord progression is clearly in B minor, so just use the B Aeolian (minor)scale. The notes are the same for B Aeolian and D Ionian, so nothing is gonna change. The only time you may want to think of each mode for each chord is if your going to substitute one mode over a chord for another. I.E. You could substitute the B Aeolian over the B minor chord with B Phrygian if you wished. The Phrygian is pretty much a minor scale except the 2nd is lowered, that's it.1

or is it 3. Do i need to take a minor scale (eg B melodic minor) and figure out the 7 modes for that and use them over the respective chords?

Yeah. You should do this anyways just for your own knowledge, same with the harmonic minor.