E Persian, E9 Pedal Steel Side

7 notes to the octave, mapped below onto this reader's E9 neck, with every E 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 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 E and let the numbers pick their own notes out of it.