B Harmonic Minor, Bass Side

7 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's EADG fretboard, with every B called out. Those markers are the useful part mid-bar: a chart moves under you, and the thing you need is where the root went — not where the pattern started.

Dark and dramatic. The raised 7th pulls hard toward the tonic, and the wide step from the b6 up to it gives the scale an exotic, almost Middle-Eastern tension.

Heard in: Classical minor-key harmony, neoclassical metal (Yngwie Malmsteen), flamenco-tinged rock, klezmer, and Balkan melodies.

Two numbers side by side leave a gap, and a bass player fills it — the walk from one root to the next is invented on the spot out of these notes, and it is the loudest improvisation on the floor.

Play it slowly against the audio until the shape stops being a shape, then take it to a chart counted in B and let the numbers pick their own notes out of it.