A Blues, Mandolin Side

6 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's GDAE fretboard, with every A 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 minor pentatonic with a b5 "blue note" wedged in — that one extra note adds grit, tension, and a sly, vocal quality. Tough, expressive, and unmistakably bluesy.

Heard in: Blues, rock, jazz, rhythm and blues, and boogie-woogie — Delta and Chicago blues, Hendrix, Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Between chopping one number and chopping the next there is a beat and a half of nothing written down, and what goes in it is a fill drawn from here rather than from the page.

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