The minor scale on guitar: same notes, different root

The minor scale is the second of the four, and it is the cheapest of them all. If you have practised the major scale you need no new shape at all for natural minor. It is the same seven notes, at the same frets, with the same fingerings. The only thing that changes is which note you are aiming at.

That sounds like a technicality, and it is the reason minor so often ends up half understood on the guitar. You learn a shape, play it over a minor backing, and it sounds right. Why it sounds right stays open, and the question comes back at the latest when the fifth degree does not do what it does in major. This article covers both, the three positions with fret numbers and the theory attached to them.

What natural minor is made of

Natural minor is what is meant here throughout. There are two further minor variants, which turn up further down, but both are alterations of this one.

The step pattern is whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole, which in frets is 2-1-2-2-1-2-2.

Degree	Note in A minor	Step from the previous	Frets above the root
1	A	root	0
2	B	whole	2
3	C	half	3
4	D	whole	5
5	E	whole	7
6	F	half	8
7	G	whole	10
8	A	whole	12

The two half steps fall between the second and third degrees and between the fifth and sixth. In major they fall between the third and fourth and at the end, between the seventh and the octave. The same two half steps, two degrees earlier, and out of that comes a completely different character.

Why these are the same notes as C major

A, B, C, D, E, F, G. The C major scale, in other words, begun on A instead of on C. Hence the name relative key for A minor next to C major, and why neither key carries a single accidental.

On the fretboard that is not a claim but something you can count. Here is position 1 of A minor:

And here is the same stretch of frets read as C major:

Not one dot has moved. What has shifted are the three red markings: in A minor they sit on the low E string at the fifth fret, the D string at the seventh and the high E string at the fifth; in C major on both E strings at the eighth and the G string at the fifth.

This is not true of one box only. Position 2 of A minor further down is just as identical with position 3 of C major. It has to be, because two scales built from the same seven notes cannot possibly have different dots on the same fretboard.

What makes minor dark

If the notes are the same, the difference can only be in the root. It is the note a melody returns to, and it shifts every interval with it.

The third degree is what decides it. In C major it sits four frets above the root, a major third. In A minor it sits three frets above, a minor third. That one fret is what the ear hears as dark or bright, in every key and in every chord.

	C major	A minor
Root	C	A
Third	E, four frets	C, three frets
Fifth	G, seven frets	E, seven frets
Seventh degree	B, eleven frets (leading tone)	G, ten frets

The second row is the difference between major and minor. The fourth is why minor ends more openly. In major the seventh degree sits a half step below the root and pulls audibly towards it, while in minor it sits a whole tone below and does not pull. Harmonic minor comes in there, later on.

You can hear it in thirty seconds. Play the position above upwards and end on the A at the fifth fret of the low E string. Then play the same notes and end on the C at the eighth fret. Two keys, one shape.

Position 2: frets 7 to 10

The roots now sit in the middle of the shape, on the D string at the seventh fret and the B string at the tenth. Five strings carry three notes and only the B string carries two.

The overlap with the previous position is wide: two shared notes on the low E string, the A string and the high E string, and one on the other three. The seventh fret belongs to both positions, and that is where the change happens.

Position 3: frets 9 to 12

This is the thinnest of the three. Four strings carry two notes and only the D and G strings carry three. The root sits on the A string at the twelfth fret and a second on the B string at the tenth.

The twelfth fret is no accident here. It is the octave of the open string, and from there the whole neck repeats. Position 3 is therefore the one where the low region hands over to the high one.

The whole neck

Seven roots fall in the first twelve frets: on the low E string at the fifth, on the A string open and at the twelfth, on the D string at the seventh, on the G string at the second, on the B string at the tenth and on the high E string at the fifth. The A string is the only one with two of them, because open it already sounds the root.

Compare this picture with the neck in C major and you see the same dots with different red markings. No coincidence there either, just the same fact one size larger.

Moving it into any key

The root of position 1 sits on the low E string, and the position starts exactly there. That makes minor more convenient than major on a guitar, since the low E string is the one whose frets you know first anyway, because barre chords hang off it.

Key	Root on the low E string	Position 1 spans
E minor	fret 0 (open) or 12	0–3 or 12–15
G minor	fret 3	3–6
A minor	fret 5	5–8
B minor	fret 7	7–10
C minor	fret 8	8–11
D minor	fret 10	10–13

E minor and A minor are the two that come up most in songs, and both lie comfortably. If you only practise two keys, practise these.

The chords of a minor key

Here too it is the same seven chords as in the relative key, because they are built from the same notes. What changes is their order and with it their function.

Degree	Chord in A minor	Type
i	Am	minor
ii	B diminished	diminished
III	C	major
iv	Dm	minor
v	Em	minor
VI	F	major
VII	G	major

Two things about that matter in practice.

The fifth degree is a minor chord. In major it is major and pulls hard back to the root, because it contains the leading tone. In natural minor it is minor and does not pull. Ending Em to Am sounds soft, almost incidental. Rock and folk often want precisely that; classical harmony mostly does not.

The third, sixth and seventh degrees are major. C, F and G in A minor, which happen to be three of the chords most beginners start with anyway. The progression Am, F, C, G is four degrees of one key, which explains why it turns up in so many songs.

How degrees combine into progressions is covered in the tutorial on scales, chords and modes.

Harmonic and melodic minor, briefly

Both come out of one practical problem. The fifth degree does not pull back to the root.

Harmonic minor raises the seventh degree by a half step, so G becomes G sharp in A minor. That puts it a half step under the root, makes it a leading tone, and turns the fifth degree into a major chord, here E major. The price is the gap between the sixth and seventh degrees, which is now three frets. That gap is the oriental-sounding leap everyone recognises straight away.

Melodic minor raises the sixth degree as well and so closes the gap again. Classically it is played that way going up and as natural minor coming back down; in jazz it is used in one form throughout.

For the first few years that placement is enough. Both are tools for a specific job, not scales you learn as a precaution. They become useful the moment you write a progression in minor and notice that the way back to the root is missing.

How to practise it

There is nothing new to gain technically once major is secure. What gets practised here is the ear.

1. One position, two target notes. Play position 1 up and down, ending on the A once and on the C the next time. Five runs, alternating. This one exercise separates major from minor, and it needs no metronome.
2. Over a backing. Record two bars of Am and two of G, or find a play-along, and use only the notes in position 1. Pay attention to where you land when the backing comes back to Am.
3. Find the third. Locate the third degree in each position, which is the C, and play the scale so that you stop on it. It is the note that makes minor minor, and hearing it is worth more than any extra position.
4. Tempo last. Quarters at 60 bpm, eighths, up in steps of 5 bpm, the usual routine. It is fourth here because it is what helps least here.

Four mistakes

1. Treating minor as separate material. If you have practised C major you can already play A minor. Learning it again as a new scale costs weeks and gains nothing.
2. Not changing the root. Playing the same position in the same key up and down while calling it major one time and minor the next changes nothing. The target note has to change as you play, or the ear hears no difference.
3. Harmonic minor too early. It answers a question you have not asked yet. Learned before that, it is a fourth scale with an odd leap in it.
4. Confusing the relative key with the parallel key. A minor is the relative of C major: same notes, different root. A major is the parallel of A minor: same root, different notes. The two terms get swapped constantly, and they mean opposite things.

What comes next

Take two notes out of this scale and you get the minor pentatonic, which is the practical payoff of the whole exercise: the same region of the neck, two notes fewer, and in exchange five worked-out positions and considerably more room to improvise. Know both and you choose by situation.

Where the seven notes come from is in the major scale, and how all four scales relate is in the overview. How relative keys, degrees and the scale system sit together does not have to be assembled from tables; in the SMART FRET circle visualisation they already sit on top of one another. Everything else the module does is in the feature overview.