Aeolian Mode (Natural Minor)
Aeolian is the natural minor scale: a minor third, a flattened sixth and a flattened seventh, with no raised leading tone anywhere. It is the default sound of minor in Western music and the sixth mode of the major scale.
Degrees: 1 2 ♭3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7
C Aeolian (Natural Minor)
The default sound of minor in Western music: unambiguously sad, with no raised leading tone and no brightening sixth to soften it.
Characteristic tone: ♭6 (A♭)
The flat sixth. Against Dorian — its nearest neighbour and the mode people most often confuse it with — the flattened sixth is the single changed note, and it is what darkens the scale's top half and creates the half-step tension down onto the fifth.
On a keyboard
Two octaves from middle C. Every key belonging to the scale is filled; the tonic is aubergine and the characteristic tone is rose-gold.
On a guitar neck
Every position of every scale note, open strings through fret 15. Scroll sideways on a phone to reach the upper frets.
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The flattened sixth, and what it darkens
Aeolian's nearest neighbour is Dorian, and exactly one note separates them: the sixth degree, natural in Dorian and flattened here. Flattening it puts a half step directly above the fifth, so the upper part of the scale leans downward onto the fifth instead of sitting open above it.
That is the specific mechanism behind Aeolian sounding heavier than Dorian despite both being minor. It is worth being precise about, because a great deal of writing about minor scales describes the difference in purely emotional language and leaves a player with nothing to actually change. The change is one note, in the upper half of the scale, and it is audible the moment you play it against a held tonic.
Why classical writing usually alters it
Aeolian's seventh degree is a whole tone below the tonic, which means the chord built on its fifth degree is minor and contains no leading tone. A minor fifth-degree chord does not pull back to the tonic with any force, so a piece using unaltered Aeolian has no strong cadence available.
Common-practice composers solved this by raising the seventh degree wherever a cadence was needed, which produces harmonic minor and a major fifth-degree chord. Raising the sixth as well, to smooth the resulting three-semitone gap, produces melodic minor. This is why sheet music in a minor key is full of accidentals that the key signature does not account for: the key signature describes Aeolian, and the music is constantly borrowing from its two altered relatives.
The chords it gives you
Three major chords sit in the upper half of this mode's harmony, on the flattened third, sixth and seventh degrees, and cycling among them over a minor tonic is the harmonic backbone of an enormous amount of rock and film writing.
The ♭VI is the one to notice. Dorian does not have it — its raised sixth turns that chord minor — so the flattened-sixth major chord is the harmonic counterpart of the single scale note separating the two modes. If you want to hear the difference between Dorian and Aeolian in one move rather than by comparing scales, play a minor tonic and then that chord.
Practising it against its relatives
The most useful drill here is a three-way comparison rather than a scale run. Over a held minor tonic chord, play the scale with a natural sixth (Dorian), then with a flattened sixth (Aeolian), then with a flattened sixth and a raised seventh (harmonic minor). Three scales, two changed notes, and the entire minor family becomes a set of decisions you can hear rather than three separate things to memorise.
The relative-major shortcut applies here too: any Aeolian scale uses the notes of the major scale a minor third above its tonic. A Aeolian is the notes of C major started on A. That relationship is the reason the same key signature serves both, and it is worth internalising before you spend time on new fingerings, because it means you already know every note.
The seven chords this mode harmonises into
Stack thirds on each degree of the scale and you get these. Read from left to right, they are the chords available to a piece written in the mode.
| Degree | 1 | 2 | ♭3 | 4 | 5 | ♭6 | ♭7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roman numeral | i | ii° | ♭III | iv | v | ♭VI | ♭VII |
| Quality | minor | diminished | major | minor | minor | major | major |
Questions people ask about Aeolian
- Are Aeolian and natural minor the same scale?
- Yes, identical. "Aeolian" places it in the modal system as the sixth mode of the major scale; "natural minor" places it in the tonal system as the unaltered form of the minor scale. The notes are the same either way.
- How is Aeolian different from harmonic minor?
- The seventh degree. Aeolian leaves it flattened, so the fifth-degree chord is minor. Harmonic minor raises it, which restores a leading tone, makes the fifth-degree chord major, and creates a three-semitone gap between the sixth and seventh degrees.
- If a piece is in a minor key, is it in Aeolian?
- Its key signature will be Aeolian's, but the music very often is not. Minor-key writing routinely raises the sixth and seventh degrees for cadences and melodic lines, so the notated accidentals matter as much as the key signature when you are working out what scale to play.