7 notes · the ♭6 · the 6th mode of the major scale
The same seven notes as the major scale a minor third above, begun on the sixth degree. What makes it sound minor rather than major is the ♭3; what makes it sound unresolved is the ♭7, which builds a minor v where a key wants a dominant.
Heard in: Rock, folk and film music; anywhere a minor key stays diatonic.
The whole scale. Choose a chord below and this row will show which of these notes it uses.
Take every other note of the scale and you have a chord. Do it from each degree in turn and you have the key. Each row below is that stack, and the letters in it say what each scale note becomes in that chord — so the Ab of the scale is the 3rd of one chord, the 5th of another and the root of a third. Choose a row to see it on the neck.
| Degree | Chord | F 1 | G 2 | Ab ♭3 | Bb 4 | C 5 | Db ♭6 | Eb ♭7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | Fm7 | R | · | 3 | · | 5 | · | 7 |
| ii° | Gm7b5 | 7 | R | · | 3 | · | 5 | · |
| ♭III | Abmaj7 | · | 7 | R | · | 3 | · | 5 |
| iv | Bbm7 | 5 | · | 7 | R | · | 3 | · |
| v | Cm7 | · | 5 | · | 7 | R | · | 3 |
| ♭VI | Dbmaj7 | 3 | · | 5 | · | 7 | R | · |
| ♭VII | Eb7 | · | 3 | · | 5 | · | 7 | R |
Every note of the scale appears in four of these chords, and every chord shares three of its four notes with the chord a third away from it. That overlap is why one can be substituted for another.
The chords on F whose every note this scale contains, biggest first. The largest of them is the one that pins the scale down: over Fm11 there is nothing in F natural minor that can sound wrong.
Same notes, different home. Which one you are in is decided by the chord underneath, not by the notes.
The key of F minor is these chords with everything a key borrows on top of them: the key explorer adds the secondary dominants, tritone substitutions and borrowed chords. Every scale on every root is on the scale index, and every chord on the chord index. Where the shapes and the theory come from is on the about page.
Shows each chord the way this style would voice it, and marks which of its alternatives belong to the idiom.