Music/Scale/Minor/Natural

• Natural Minor Scale

  • Also called Aeolian and pure minor. On C: C D E♭ F G A♭ B♭. Steps in semitones: 2 1 2 2 1 2 2. The sixth mode of Music/Scale/Major.

  • History

    • Person/Heinrich Glarean named the mode on A Aeolian in the Dodecachordon (15/4/7). Before that, a D-final piece with a B♭ sounded the same collection while still counting as Dorian.
    • Common-practice minor was never this collection alone. Cadences raised the seventh, first through musica ficta and later in notation, and melodic lines raised or lowered the sixth as voice leading required. Natural, Music/Scale/Minor/Harmonic and Music/Scale/Minor/Melodic are later pedagogical slices of one flexible minor mode.

  • Use

    • Aeolian folk song keeps the minor dominant (v) and cadences without a leading tone.
    • Rock and film music use the Aeolian progressions i–♭VII–♭VI and i–♭VI–♭VII, which treat ♭VII as a dominant substitute. In C: Cm–B♭–A♭.
    • In jazz the Aeolian chord-scale fits a minor chord functioning as vi in a major key, where Dorian would put the raised sixth against the key.

  • Quirks

    • The scale shares its key signature with its relative major. Baroque composers sometimes wrote minor pieces with one flat fewer than the modern signature, a holdover from Dorian notation; see Music/Scale/Dorian.
    • The ♭6 separates Aeolian from Dorian. Many melodies described as "minor" use only scale degrees 1 through 5 and never decide between them.
    • The MicroFreak's "Minor" setting is listed in its manual as C D E♭ F G A B♭ B, which lacks A♭, the note that separates natural minor from Dorian, and adds B natural. See Microfreak/UG/15 Using Scales/01 Scale Settings and Music/Scale/Dorian/Bebop. The Launchpad's "Natural Minor" setting carries this scale's name; its manual lists no pitches.