C Dorian — Lap Steel

Every note of C Dorian 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.

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

Minor with a raised 6th (natural 6) — soulful, smooth, and less dark than natural minor. The quintessential jazz-minor and blues mode.

Heard in: "So What" (Miles Davis), "Oye Como Va" (Santana), "Eleanor Rigby" (Beatles) — rock, blues, funk, jazz.

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.