Natural Minor Scale
Learn the natural minor scale
Hopefully, you've read our earlier blogs about the Pentatonic scales, as well as the Major scale. If not, we'd suggest becoming really familiar with these and practising these first before tackling this blog.
Firstly, like with the other scales previously described, we need to know the intervals that make up the scale which is as follows.
1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7.
If we take A as our starting note, the scale would look like this:
A-B-C-D-E-F-G.
Now, if you have a look at the notes here, can you think of another scale that these notes belong to? Try and figure this out before scrolling down to look at the answer.
The answer is C major. But now think, if we started our Aeolian/ Natural minor on A and have the same notes as the C major scale, can you think how these are related?
These two scales are related in the following way, our Aeolian/ Natural Minor starts on the 6th note of our major scale.
Chords in Aeolian:
When we are learning a song either by looking at a chord chart or working out by ear, we are listening for the chords and the melody. We've already discussed the notes that make up this scale, however, we also need to know the chords that can be formed on each note of the scale. We'll keep to using the example key of A minor, but remember, the chord type and interval that it relates to is applicable to all keys.
| Step | Chord |
|---|---|
| I | A minor |
| II | B diminshed |
| III | C major |
| IV | D minor |
| V | E minor |
| VI | F major |
| VII | G major |
To conclude, if you have already become familiar with the Major Scale. All you need to do to learn our Natural Minor scale is play the same notes, however, starting on the 6th.
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