This lesson has been adapted from the fabulous original written by Christopher Sung.

The A Minor Scale
The minor scale is one of the most basic and well-known scales in Western music, and of the minor scales, the A minor scale is often taught first because it consists of all the white keys on a piano. The notes in an A minor scale are:

A B C D E F G

These notes may also look familiar because they also form the C major scale if you start from C instead of A. Minor scales that contain the same notes as a major scale are often called the relative minor of that major scale. Thus A minor is the relative minor of C major. Like the C major scale, the A minor has no sharps or flats.

In the example below, we play our A minor scale over a repeating A minor chord. Play it slowly until you get it under your fingers, and then gradually increase the tempo.