Db Aeolian Mode

What is the Db Aeolian Mode?

The Aeolian mode is the sixth mode of the major scale and is identical to the natural minor scale. Thinking of it as a mode helps you understand its relationship to the other six modes and makes it easier to shift between modal colors when improvising over diatonic progressions. Here's how the Db Aeolian Mode lays out on the fretboard. This scale is enharmonically equivalent to C# Aeolian.

Notes and Positions

The sixth mode - identical to the natural minor scale. Sad and introspective. On guitar, you can treat this as both a lead vocabulary and a way to see chord tones inside common shapes. Start with one box, then connect it to the nearest root on the next string set. In the key of Db, the notes are: Db, Eb, Fb, Gb, Ab, Bbb, Cb.

How to Use It

You'll often hear it in Rock, Metal, Classical, and R&B. A good way to internalize the sound is to sing the root, then sing a few scale degrees before you play them.

Start by playing one position slowly and saying the note names or degrees out loud. Use the interactive fretboard above to spot repeats of the same note on different strings and frets.