A Gypsy Minor — Lap Steel

Every note of A Gypsy Minor as a bar position on the lap steel's six strings in C6 — the root ringed each time it recurs, and a button that plays the run.

A Gypsy Minor is 7 notes to the octave (world family), drawn here across the lap steel's six strings in C6 with every A marked, so home stays visible from anywhere in the pattern.

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.

On a lap steel a scale is played by moving the bar: every note on a string sits a fret apart, and the tuning decides which neighbouring string holds the next one without a slide. These maps light every root so the bar always knows where home is.

Work it in one position before you work it up the neck. A bar that lands a hair short of the marker sounds flat on every string it covers, and the ear hears that long before the run is fast.