A Melodic Minor Scale on Jacob Collier 5-String

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

Jacob Collier 5-String's tuning sits inside this one: all 3 open strings are scale tones and one of them is A itself — D (the 4th), A (the root), E (the 5th). Open-string drones cost nothing here. Open, the strings cover D2 to D4.

Minor at the bottom, major at the top — the b3 keeps it minor while the natural 6 and 7 lift the upper half into a smooth climb home. Bittersweet rather than dark, with a polished, modern-jazz sheen.

Heard in: Jazz lines over minor and altered chords, film scoring, and classical melodies rising to the tonic — Bach, Mozart, and bebop alike.

Jacob Collier 5-String is tuned D–A–E–A–D, with 15 frets to work with. This 5-string is tuned D-A-E-A-D (low to high), a symmetric tuning that mirrors around the middle E string — standard guitar shapes do NOT transfer, so every voicing here is built for this tuning.

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 Melodic 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.