One of the beautiful things about music is how it can trigger visceral emotions within us. You’ve already heard the major scale, which is often associated with joy and positivity. It’s depressed emo brother is the Minor Scale - often associated with sorrow.

The Minor Scale Pattern

The pattern for the minor scale is the following (again, W = Whole Step, H = Half Step):

Using this pattern to construct A minor:

• We start a A.
• A whole step from A is B. (A - A# - B).
• A half step from B is C. (B - C).
• A whole step gives D.
• Another whole step to E.
• A half step up to F.
• A whole step to G.
• And another whole step, bringing us back to A.

That gives us A - B - C - D - E - F - G - A.

This is interesting - just like C Major is a ‘base’ major scale - no sharps or flats - the A Minor scale is the ‘base’ minor scale (that’s just a term I made up, but I hope it gets the point across).

You could use this to construct the other minor scales, but there are two much easier methods.

The Parallel Major

Every minor scale has a parallel major (and vice-versa). This is the major scale that starts on the same note as the minor scale.

The parallel major of A Minor would be A Major, the parallel minor of C Major would be C Minor etc.

There is an interesting relationship between a minor scale and its parallel major - to construct a minor scale, take the parallel major and flatten the third, sixth and seventh notes.

Naturally, if you knew the minor scale and wanted to construct the parallel major, you could raise those same notes by a semitone.

The Relative Major

The relative major of a minor scale is the major scale with all the same notes as the minor scale. I mentioned earlier that A Minor has no sharps or flats. Neither does C Major - these are relative scales.

To construct a minor scale from the relative major, shift the major scale 6 places to the left. In other words, a minor scale always starts from the sixth note of its relative major.

Here are a few minor scales played on a fretboard.

In the next lesson, we’ll take a look at intervals - how do you refer to the notes in a scale based on their position and purpose?