Guitar Lessons From Your Own Home
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Minor Scale Theory
The term minor is used often to describe the type and sound of a melody or chord. While major is characterized by a brighter, happier sound, minor gives off a darker, sadder sound. Both melodies and chords are built off of either major or minor intervals which separates the sound to our ears into brighter or darker.
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The minor scale can be found in relation to the major scale. We will be using the key of C major in this explanation. As we've found in the , using the interval pattern of whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, the notes in the C major scale are as follows: C, D, E, F, G, A, B and then back to C.
A relative minor scale is a scale that uses the same notes as a major scale, but just in a different order to give the sequence of notes a different sound. From any major scale, the 6th note of the scale will be the start of the relative minor. In order to turn the scale into a minor scale, we will make the 6th note our root (our starting note). The scale then takes the name of the 6th note of the major. Starting at a different point in the set of notes given to you in your major, while using the exact same notes will change the context your notes are presented, allowing you darker and sadder melodies to add to your musical pallete. Having both of these options are useful for creating contrast in songs.
From the key of C major, we find that our relative minor is A minor.
Using the same notes available to us in the C major scale (all ) but starting and ending on the 6th note (A) instead of the first note (C) will give us this set of notes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and back to what we'll now refer to as our minor root, A. This next diagram shows these notes going up the A string from the open A.
If we look at the interval pattern we now have starting from and ending on A, we end up with whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. This is the interval pattern for the minor scale. No matter what note you start on, if you're trying to play a minor scale, it will follow this interval pattern. Let's see what this looks like starting from A on the 5th fret of the 6th (low E) string instead of the open A string.
Just like we did on the , by using relative note finding, we can find these notes to fit into one position without having to move our hand around too much and efficiently reach the notes we would need to play a minor pattern. In order to utilize as much of the guitar as possible, we'll start on the A that lands on the 5th fret of the 6th string. The following is a one octave pattern through the minor scale interval pattern.
Now we can follow this pattern up another octave to fill in the higher strings of the guitar. This pattern is commonly known as
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