D minor scale on tenor banjo
One flat, centred on D. A smaller family than the majors, with some of the collection’s most striking airs in it.
Hear the scale, played on the banjo voice
The notes
Every note above sits in first position on a GDAE-tuned tenor banjo: nothing higher than fret 5, and each note has one home. Learn the scale as a shape and your fingers know where every note of every D minor tune lives before you have heard it.
The chords that go with it
This is the connection that makes session playing make sense. The backer's chords are built from the same 7 notes as the scale, so when the guitar holds Dm, anything you play from the D minor scale fits. Melody players who seem to improvise freely are doing exactly this: decorating the tune with notes that never leave its own scale. Shapes for every chord here are on the tenor banjo chord page.
Written minor keys in the tradition are a family rather than a fixed scale: the sixth note comes and goes, so many of these tunes lean dorian in practice. Play what the tune gives you rather than the textbook.
Tunes in D minor
46 of the 2701 tunes on this site are recorded in Dm. A dozen to start on, in alphabetical order - every one has free GDAE tab, playback and the ABC source.
Questions about D minor
D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C, D. On a GDAE-tuned tenor banjo the whole scale sits in first position, between the open strings and fret 5.
Dm, Am, C carry most tunes in D minor, with Bb, F as passing and turnaround chords. Two or three chords are enough: Irish accompaniment stays out of the tune's way.
In an Irish session the chord follows the tune, not the other way round. If the tune is in D minor, every note of the scale above fits over its chords, including Dm and Am and C. That is how melody players improvise variations without reading anything: they stay inside the tune's own scale.
This site's collection has 46 tunes recorded in Dm out of 2701 in total, each with free GDAE tab. The corpus is O'Neill's 1903 and 1907 collections plus Kerr's Merry Melodies, so the balance reflects the tradition as it was written down.