The Aeolian Scale



"Hey, I am familiar with that one!", said the young heavy metal guitar player to himself when discovering all his favourite headbanging tunes were based around the Aeolian mode.

Well, that´s how I felt when I spent an entire summer indoors with my Vantage Flying V between my teenage knees (a shitty guitar to sit down and play by the way), riffing along to "Kill ´em All" by Metallica and trying to tune in a Dio concert which was being broadcasted over Radio Luxemburg. "Holy Diver" is a very, very Aeolian song I quickly learned, very Aeolian...

This minor scale is the sixth mode and the root is in A, with B, C, D, E, F, G following.