A Aeolian Scale on Octave Mandolin

Play the A Aeolian scale on Octave Mandolin with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Aeolian scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the modes family.

Octave Mandolin's tuning sits inside this one: all 4 open strings are scale tones and one of them is A itself — G (the flat 7th), D (the 4th), A (the root), E (the 5th). Open-string drones cost nothing here. Open, the strings cover G2 to E4.

Same as Natural Minor.

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.

Octave Mandolin 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 Aeolian 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.