C Melodic Minor, Mandolin Side

7 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's GDAE fretboard, 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.

Minor at the bottom, major at the top — the b3 keeps it minor while the natural 6 and 7 lift the upper half into a smooth climb home. Bittersweet rather than dark, with a polished, modern-jazz sheen.

Heard in: Jazz lines over minor and altered chords, film scoring, and classical melodies rising to the tonic — Bach, Mozart, and bebop alike.

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