D Locrian, Lap Steel Side

7 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's CEGACE neck, with every D 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.

The most dissonant, unstable mode — the tonic chord is diminished (b5), making a true Locrian tonal center rare. Used for color and passing harmony.

Heard in: Metal riffs, jazz (half-diminished ø7 chords in ii°7 – V – i), horror and tension film scores.

With a bar instead of fingers, a scale is a set of stopping places rather than a set of grips, and the slide between two of them is as much of the line as either end.

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