A Gypsy Major on Vihuela

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

Brash and colorful — a #2 crushed against the major 3rd and a #4 give it a Lydian-dominant swagger with a Romani twist. Bold, spicy, and unpredictable.

Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Bartok and Liszt, gypsy-jazz flourishes, and fusion lines over dominant chords.

The armonía is not a soloing section, so a scale here is diagnostic rather than melodic: it is how a player finds which tones a grip is actually putting in the air on a neck whose octaves do not run in order.

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