C Half Whole Diminished, C6 Pedal Steel Side

8 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.

Tense, symmetrical, and slightly sinister — alternating half and whole steps pack in the b9, #9, #11, and 13, so it sounds like a dominant chord stretched to breaking point. Edgy, jazzy, and restless.

Heard in: Jazz lines over 13b9 dominant chords, fusion, film-noir and horror scoring — the sound of a V chord that refuses to settle.

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.