I’m going to teach you how to fly all over the bass fretboard with the Natural Minor Scale (it’s way easier than you think!)

Pattern Busting Minor Scale Exercise 

Here’s a bass line built from the A natural minor scale, as you can see, it moves beyond the typical natural minor scale pattern that many bass players can get boxed into. By learning this line, you’ll be able to run the entire fretboard within a minor key or when playing the natural minor scale.

This turbo boosts your fretboard fluency, and helps you breakout of the box pattern that so many bass players get stuck into. This example is in the Key of A minor as there are no accidentals (sharps or flats) to worry about.

This exercise moves diagonally along the fretboard and through different positions. Once you feel comfortable playing this, you can move your starting note and play this in different keys, although you may have to make some adjustments depending on the key you’re in.

The Natural Minor Scale – A Minor

Below is the typical fingering of the A natural minor scale, rather than starting from the open A string, this example starts from the 5th fret on the E string. It just goes to show that there are many places on the fretboard to play the same notes or even pitches.