When you're listening to music There are two main types of scales that are typically being used to create music. Those two scales are the major scale or the Ionian scale, and the Aeolian scale, which is commonly called natural minor. Because the minor scale is so prevalent in today's music, it's very important that every guitar player is able to play the scale in any key anywhere on the neck. So what is the natural minor scale? The Natural Minor Scale is just a series of seven notes separated by either half steps or whole steps. Now let's take a minute to learn the pattern of the minor scale.

In a minor scale, there are seven notes. So you have to understand that there's a pattern, all you have to do is follow the pattern of half steps and whole steps. And that pattern is a whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step and then another whole step back to the root So now let's creating minor scale using that pattern of whole steps and half steps. So I'm choosing to start here on G, I could start anywhere on the neck, any note doesn't matter. But I'm going to start here on G. So we're going to create a G minor scale. Alright, so I'm going to play this G, and I'm gonna go up a whole step.

Then I'm gonna go up a half step, then I have two whole steps, a whole step, whole step. Then I have a half step, then a whole step. And then another whole step. I should mention that what a whole step is, is five starting here on this G to play a whole step I would go up two frets, or down two frets. If I needed to go down a whole step. If I needed to go up a half step, then I would go up just one fret, down one fret, so a whole step is two frets apart.

And a half step is only one fret apart. So let's go ahead and recreate that G minor scale going up the neck again. We're gonna start on G, we're gonna go a whole step and a half step, whole step whole step, and we have a half step, then two more whole steps a whole step, and then on another whole step, and that would be a G minor scale being played going up the first string. Almost every genre of music uses the minor scale, so every guitar player has to learn the scale. Certain types of music rely heavily on minor blues rock, country, indie, heavy metal and pop the name a few. The bottom line is to play guitar.

Well, you have to know how to play the minor scale and understand the music theory that goes along with it. If you understand the minor scale, the pentatonic scale, the chord tones and the diatonic chords, you're well on your way to mastering the minor scale.