C Phrygian on Guitarrón

C Phrygian runs 7 notes to the octave. Below it is mapped onto this instrument's A–D–G–C–E–A fingerboard with every C marked, because what a player needs mid-number is not the pattern but where the root is when the harmony moves under it.

Very dark minor with a half-step above the tonic. Spanish, Flamenco, and metal flavor — exotic, tense, and mysterious.

Heard in: Flamenco, metal, dark film scores — Carlos Santana solos, Joe Satriani's "War", Moorish and Andalusian music.

The bass takes almost no melodic line, and that is precisely why these matter: the notes between one root and the next come out of a scale, and an approach that lands wrong is the loudest wrong note in the ensemble.

Take it slowly against the playback until the geometry stops being geometry, then put it under a number in C minor and let the written line pick its own notes out of it.