A Locrian on Vihuela

A Locrian 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.

The most dissonant, unstable mode — the tonic chord is diminished (b5), making a true Locrian tonal center rare. Used for color and passing harmony.

Heard in: Metal riffs, jazz (half-diminished ø7 chords in ii°7 – V – i), horror and tension film scores.

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 minor and let the written line pick its own notes out of it.