C Locrian on Violin

C Locrian runs 7 notes to the octave. Below it is mapped onto this instrument's G–D–A–E 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.

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 melody section plays written lines together, so a scale is section practice before it is anyone's vocabulary: several players putting the same pitch in the same place, with nothing on the neck to arbitrate.

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.