E Phrygian — C6 Pedal Steel

Every note of E Phrygian as a bar position on the C6 neck's ten strings, pedals up — the root ringed each time it recurs, and a button that plays the run.

E Phrygian is 7 notes to the octave (modes family), drawn here across the C6 neck's ten strings with every E marked, so home stays visible from anywhere in the pattern.

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.

On a pedal steel a scale is mostly played with the bar moving, one or two notes at a time, and the pedals supply the notes a bar position lacks. These maps show the neck with the pedals up, so what they light is the ground every pedal move starts from.

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.