C# Half Whole Diminished, Upright Bass Side

8 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's EADG fingerboard, with every C# 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.

Tense, symmetrical, and slightly sinister — alternating half and whole steps pack in the b9, #9, #11, and 13, so it sounds like a dominant chord stretched to breaking point. Edgy, jazzy, and restless.

Heard in: Jazz lines over 13b9 dominant chords, fusion, film-noir and horror scoring — the sound of a V chord that refuses to settle.

The walk from one number to the next has further to travel on this instrument, so the notes it passes through are chosen for the distance as much as for the harmony.

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