B Major, Bass Side

Where B Major lies on this reader's fretboard, and what it is for.

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.

Bright, resolved, and stable. The foundation of Western tonal music and the most common mode in pop, classical, folk, and jazz.

Heard in: Pop, classical, country, folk, gospel — the default major tonality of Western music.

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.