C Natural Minor Scale on Terz Guitar

Play the C Natural Minor scale on Terz Guitar 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.

Terz Guitar's tuning sits inside this one: all 5 open strings are scale tones and one of them is C itself — G (the 5th), C (the root), F (the 4th), A# (the flat 7th), D (the 2nd). Open-string drones cost nothing here. Open, the strings cover G2 to G4.

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.

Terz Guitar is tuned G–C–F–A#–D–G, with 15 frets to work with. Guitar shapes work unchanged on terz guitar — finger them exactly as charted; every shape sounds a minor third 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 C Natural Minor scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of C 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.