B Harmonic Minor Scale on Guitalele

Play the B Harmonic Minor scale on Guitalele with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Harmonic Minor scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the common family.

3 of Guitalele's 5 open strings belong to B Harmonic Minor: D (the flat 3rd), G (the flat 6th), E (the 4th). The A and C strings fall outside it, and B is not available open. Open, the strings cover A2 to A4.

Dark and dramatic. The raised 7th pulls hard toward the tonic, and the wide step from the b6 up to it gives the scale an exotic, almost Middle-Eastern tension.

Heard in: Classical minor-key harmony, neoclassical metal (Yngwie Malmsteen), flamenco-tinged rock, klezmer, and Balkan melodies.

Guitalele is tuned A–D–G–C–E–A, with 15 frets to work with. Guitar shapes work unchanged on guitalele — finger them exactly as charted; every shape sounds a perfect fourth higher than on guitar.

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 B Harmonic Minor scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of B 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.