My Guitar Notes

Eb harmonic minor scale

The natural minor scale with a raised seventh. The raised seventh provides a leading tone to the tonic, at the cost of an augmented second between the flat sixth and the seventh degrees.

Root
Eb (also written D#)
Scale
Harmonic minor
Type
minor-variant
Notes
Eb F Gb Ab Bb Cb D
Notes in the scale
7
Degree formula
1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7
Semitones from the root
0 2 3 5 7 8 11
Step pattern
W H W W H W+H H
Key signature of this root
Eb major / C minor · Bb Eb Ab
Written use
Named 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7. Supplies the dominant chord in a minor key; the scale on its fifth degree is the phrygian dominant.

Notes and degrees

Each degree of the scale, its note name in this key, and its distance from the root in semitones.

DegreeNoteSemitonesInterval from the root
1Eb0Perfect unisontonic
2F2Major second
b3Gb3Minor third
4Ab5Perfect fourth
5Bb7Perfect fifth
b6Cb8Minor sixth
7D11Major seventh

Positions on the guitar

The five windows below are computed, not copied from a shape chart. The script locates the lowest occurrence of Eb on each of the five upper strings within the first twelve frets and takes a five-fret window centred on it. Because a scale repeats every twelve frets, these five windows cover the whole neck; the same sequence returns an octave higher. The positions are numbered from the lowest fret upwards, so position 1 is always the window nearest the nut and position 5 the window nearest the twelfth fret.

Position 1

Root on the 4th string D3 at fret 1. 13 notes of the scale inside this window.

String0123
1st (highest) string E4FGb
2nd string B3BD
3rd string G3AbBb
4th string D3DEbF
5th string A2BbB
6th string E2FGb

Position 2

Root on the 2nd string B3 at fret 4. 17 notes of the scale inside this window.

String23456
1st (highest) string E4GbAbBb
2nd string B3DEbF
3rd string G3BbB
4th string D3FGbAb
5th string A2BDEb
6th string E2GbAbBb

Position 3

Root on the 5th string A2 at fret 6. 18 notes of the scale inside this window.

String45678
1st (highest) string E4AbBbB
2nd string B3EbFGb
3rd string G3BDEb
4th string D3GbAbBb
5th string A2DEbF
6th string E2AbBbB

Position 4

Root on the 3rd string G3 at fret 8. 18 notes of the scale inside this window.

String678910
1st (highest) string E4BbBD
2nd string B3FGbAb
3rd string G3DEbF
4th string D3AbBbB
5th string A2EbFGb
6th string E2BbBD

Position 5

Root on the 6th string E2 at fret 11. 18 notes of the scale inside this window.

String910111213
1st (highest) string E4DEbF
2nd string B3AbBbB
3rd string G3FGbAb
4th string D3BDEb
5th string A2GbAbBb
6th string E2DEbF

Read the grid as a chord diagram: the top row is the first string. Degrees appear in the notes and degrees table above; a filled cell is a note of the scale, and the shaded cell is the tonic.

Related keys and modes

Related