The Aeolian mode is the sixth mode of the major scale, also known as the natural minor scale. Flatten the 3rd, 6th, and 7th degrees of a major scale and you get Aeolian, which needs no extra accidentals beyond what defines minor.
Okay, up next is Aeolian. Aeolian is our sixth mode. So that's right here. So if I delete the first five notes and start on the sixth scale degree, and then I keep going back up, I have an Aeolian scale. Now you know this one. You've seen this before 100 times. What also do I have here? Not only do I have an Aeolian scale, but what did I also just make? I also just made the relative minor scale, right? The relative minor of C major is a minor. So by going up to the sixth scale degree, both made in aeolian mode and the relative minor, that means that aeolian is just another word for minor, which is correct. That's true. Just like Aeonian is another word for major, Aeolian is another word for minor. So if we go up to the sixth, that is kind of the definition of relative minor, right? So we've made the relative minor. So let's do it the other way. So if I take a C major scale and I want to convert it to a C aeolian scale, let's do the same process. What do I got to do? Is it closer to a major scale or a minor scale? Well, the Aeolian is very much closer to a minor scale. So let's convert this to a minor scale, flat, the third, sixth and seventh. Okay, now I have a C minor scale. Now from there, what's the altered thing? Because in all the other modes we've seen that it's either a major scale or a minor scale with one other alteration. This is an exception because this is a minor scale with no alterations. It's just a plain old minor scale, the aeolian. So remember that aeolian is just another word for minor scale for the exact same reason that Ionian is another word for major scale.
