The Aeolian Scale (Natural Minor) on Guitar

Aeolian is the natural minor scale: minor pentatonic with two notes added. In A, it’s A B C D E F G. The note that gives it its weight is the flat 6th, F. And most minor-key songs borrow one note that isn’t in the scale at all. Knowing both is most of what you need to use it well.

Most lessons teach natural minor in a page: here are the notes, here’s the box, done. What they leave out is the bit that matters. The F means something different over every chord. And the moment a minor song gets home, it usually leaves natural minor for one note. Play the scale straight through that moment and you’ll hit a wrong note exactly when everyone’s listening. This page covers both.

Hear it first

Let the open A string ring. Play this up the G string slowly and let each note hang over it.

One fret is the only difference. The F# at the 11th fret floats and brightens the sound. That’s Dorian. The F at the 10th sits a half step above the E and leans down on it. It wants to fall, and that falling pull is the heavy, sad weight of natural minor.

Four patterns, root to root

You’ll find plenty of five-box minor scale charts elsewhere. I don’t use them. A six-string box hides the root somewhere in the middle of a grid of dots. A one-octave pattern that runs from A to A keeps home at the bottom and the top, so you always know which note you’re on.

It also makes the F easy to find. In every pattern below, it’s two notes below the top A. All four share the same layout: three notes, three notes, two notes.

That’s all the fingering you need to start using natural minor. Find any A, play the pattern that starts there, and know where the F is.

Natural minor in every key

The Aeolian note is always the 6th, a minor 6th above the root. The last column is the note you’ll borrow over the major V chord, which Chapter 6 of the book covers in full. The patterns above move to any key: put the root on the key note.

When to use natural minor, and when not to

You don’t need theory to know when natural minor fits. You need one note and a look at the chords. In A, the note is F for natural minor and F# for Dorian. In another key, check the table above.

• If any chord has an F in it, natural minor is your scale.
• If any chord has an F# in it, natural minor clashes. Use Dorian over that chord.
• If none of the chords has either, it’s your choice.

There’s a second check most players miss: look for an E or E7 chord. They contain G#, which isn’t in natural minor. More on that below. These are the progressions where you’ll hear natural minor most:

The chord it lives on

Play an open Am, then move the note on the D string up one fret and mute the A string. That’s Fmaj7.

Am and F share two notes. The only note that changes is the E moving up a fret to F. The F is the root of the F chord, which is why Am to F is the sound of half the minor-key songs you know. The scale and the progression are doing the same thing.

Where natural minor runs out

Play Am, Em, Am. Then Am, E, Am.

One fret on the G string. Em has a G. E has a G#, which sits a half step under the A and pulls straight up into it. That’s why the second version gets home with far more force.

G# isn’t in natural minor. So when a minor-key song wants to arrive home with conviction, it borrows that one note, and most minor-key songs do. The rule is simple: over E or E7, play G# instead of G. When the chord goes back to Am, the G comes back. You’ll see this called harmonic minor. You don’t need the name, just the note.

Where the F goes

The F means something different over every chord, and that’s what makes natural minor sound expressive rather than flat.

• Over Am, it’s the dark note. It wants to fall to E. Hold it for tension, then let it go.
• Over F, it’s the root. Land on it.
• Over Dm, it’s the 3rd. A sweet, safe landing.
• Over E7, it clashes. Use it only as a passing note on the way to E.

Common questions