G# Persian, Mandolin Side

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

Intensely exotic — two half-step clusters (b2 against the root, b5 against the 4) and a raised 7th make it the most dramatic of the world scales. Mysterious, ornate, and tense.

Heard in: Persian and Middle-Eastern-flavored melodies, film scoring for desert and ancient settings, and exotic metal and progressive-rock riffs.

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