A Natural Minor Scale on Taro-Patch Ukulele

Play the A Natural Minor scale on Taro-Patch Ukulele 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.

Taro-Patch Ukulele's tuning sits inside this one: all 4 open strings are scale tones and one of them is A itself — G (the flat 7th), C (the flat 3rd), E (the 5th), A (the root). Open-string drones cost nothing here. Open, the strings cover C4 to A4.

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.

Taro-Patch Ukulele 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 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.