: V7 and the minor scale I am reading through Mark Levine's Jazz theory book, He says there is no workable dominant 7th chord in the minor scale. OK, that is true if you look at the descending melodic minor / natural minor

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if you look at the descending melodic minor / natural minor scale but all his examples are with the ascending melodic minor ( or even the harmonic minor) which does have the V7 chord in there.....Please can someone help clear this up.

That isn't how minor key harmony works.

In short, the seventh degree of the key is variable depending on the harmony. When the harmony is dominant the seventh degree is raised.

That applies as a general rule to classical and jazz harmony.

A classical example is i v6 iv6 V where the lowered seventh is used in v6 (a minor triad in first inversion) then the raised seventh is used for V7.

In jazz a basic minor blues demonstrates it too. In G minor the tonic Gm7 uses an F natural for the lowered seventh, but then in the turnaround the dominant chord D7 uses F sharp for a raised seventh.

There is not one, fixed minor scale.

Think of it more like minor key or minor tonality.

If you play a scalar passage in minor, the exact series of notes, the quality of the sixth and seventh degrees, will depend on the harmony of the passage. Also, it has nothing to do with the direction of the motion. That is another terrible textbook falsehood easily disproved by countless examples of real music.