A Natural Minor Scale on 5-String Banjo

Play the A Natural Minor scale on 5-String Banjo with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Natural Minor scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the common family.

All 3 of 5-String Banjo's open strings fall inside A Natural Minor — g (the flat 7th), D (the 4th), B (the 2nd) — though A itself has to be stopped. Open, the strings cover D3 to G4.

It is also known as the Aeolian scale.

The standard natural minor scale — melancholic, introspective, and deeply emotive. The most common minor sound in Western music.

Heard in: Pop, rock, classical, metal — the default minor sound of Western music.

It has a drum head rather than a wooden top, so notes bloom and die fast.

Each position shows the scale notes and their intervals from the root so you can connect the shape to its sound, hear it with audio playback, and practice it in any register. Movable patterns let you transpose the same fingering to other keys once it is learned.

Once a position is under your fingers, link the A Natural Minor scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of A to start improvising and writing with it. Working a scale alongside its chords is the fastest way to make it stick and to hear how it colors a progression.