F Gypsy Minor, Bass Side

7 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's EADG fretboard, with every F 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.

Harmonic minor with a raised 4th — two wide, yearning steps (b3 to #4, b6 to 7) give it a smoldering, theatrical intensity. Dark, exotic, and full of drama.

Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, gypsy jazz, klezmer, and neoclassical metal.

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 F and let the numbers pick their own notes out of it.