Aeolian (Natural Minor)
This scale is also known by other names: Minor, Natural Minor.
2 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 2About Aeolian (Natural Minor)
The C minor scale has three flats — B♭, E♭ and A♭ — and it is the key of large gestures. Beethoven returned to it repeatedly; film composers reach for it when something serious is about to happen. On guitar it is played almost entirely above the third fret, with barres throughout.
The notes
C D E♭ F G A♭ B♭, then C. Three flats, shared with E♭ major, its relative. The E♭ is the note that makes the scale minor; the A♭ and B♭ are what give it its particular darkness compared with, say, A minor, which has no accidentals at all.
Raise the B♭ to B natural and you get the harmonic minor, with its distinctive gap between A♭ and B. That interval — an augmented second — is the sound most listeners associate with drama, and it exists in this scale only when the seventh is altered.
On the fretboard
The movable minor shape from the eighth fret with the root on the low E string is the standard position, and the third-fret A-string root is the other. Neither uses an open string, so both are transposable — the same fingering serves every minor key.
The chords are Cm, D diminished, E♭, Fm, Gm, A♭, B♭. Every one of them is a barre. This is the clearest case on the instrument of a key that is musically ordinary and physically demanding.
Where it is used
Orchestral and piano music above all, plus film and game scoring. On guitar it usually arrives through a parallel switch from C major rather than as a starting key.
Its relative major is E♭, and the pair works the way A minor and C major do — same notes, different home. A song that moves between Cm and E♭ has not changed key, only its centre.
Related Scales from Diatonic
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