A Natural Minor Scale on Mandolin

Play the A Natural Minor scale on Mandolin 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.

Mandolin's tuning sits inside this one: all 4 open courses are scale tones and one of them is A itself — G (the flat 7th), D (the 4th), A (the root), E (the 5th). Open-course drones cost nothing here. Open, the courses cover G3 to E5.

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.

Mandolin is strung in four courses of two, each pair tuned in unison, 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 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.