Upright Bass: Eb Phrygian Over the Changes

Where Eb Phrygian lies at this seat, and what a chorus takes out of it.

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

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 upright takes a chorus less often than anyone, and that is exactly why these matter: the notes between one chord root and the next come out of a scale, and a walk that lands on the wrong one is the loudest wrong note in the room.

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.