C Blues, C6 Pedal Steel Side

6 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's C6 neck, 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.

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 two numbers the bar comes to rest and the pedals keep working: a pedal or lever raises a ringing string into the next note of a line, so a scale here marks where the bar can stop and which of its notes a bend can reach from there.

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