F Half Whole Diminished — C6 Pedal Steel

F Half Whole Diminished is 8 notes to the octave (symmetric family), drawn here across the C6 neck's ten strings with every F marked, so home stays visible from anywhere in the pattern.

Tense, symmetrical, and slightly sinister — alternating half and whole steps pack in the b9, #9, #11, and 13, so it sounds like a dominant chord stretched to breaking point. Edgy, jazzy, and restless.

Heard in: Jazz lines over 13b9 dominant chords, fusion, film-noir and horror scoring — the sound of a V chord that refuses to settle.

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.