A Major Scale on Mandola

Play the A Major scale on Mandola with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Major scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the common family.

A is available as an open string on Mandola, and 2 of its 4 open strings are scale tones — D (the 4th), A (the root). The C and G strings sit outside the scale. Open, the strings cover C3 to A4.

It is also known as the Ionian scale.

Bright, resolved, and stable. The foundation of Western tonal music and the most common mode in pop, classical, folk, and jazz.

Heard in: Pop, classical, country, folk, gospel — the default major tonality of Western music.

Mandola is strung in four courses of two, so each stopped note here sounds as two — which is why the shape rings thicker than the same grip on a single-strung instrument.

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 Major 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.