Electric Bass: D Gypsy Minor Over the Changes

Where D Gypsy Minor lies at this seat, and what a chorus takes out of it.

D Gypsy Minor runs 7 notes to the octave, laid out here on EADG with every D flagged. Mid-chorus the pattern is not what you need; where the root is when the chord changes underneath you is.

Harmonic minor with a raised 4th — two wide, yearning steps (b3 to #4, b6 to 7) give it a smoldering, theatrical intensity. Dark, exotic, and full of drama.

Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, gypsy jazz, klezmer, and neoclassical metal.

The electric bass can hold a note long enough for it to be heard as a choice rather than a step, so a scale here is read for its strong tones first and its passing tones second.

Play it slowly against the audio until it stops being a shape, then put it over two bars of a form and let the chord tones decide which of the notes you actually keep.