C Lydian — E9 Pedal Steel

Every note of C Lydian as a bar position on the E9 neck's ten strings, pedals up — the root ringed each time it recurs, and a button that plays the run.

C Lydian is 7 notes to the octave (modes family), drawn here across the E9 neck's ten strings with every C marked, so home stays visible from anywhere in the pattern.

Major with a raised 4th (#4) — dreamy, ethereal, and floating. Often called the brightest mode, with an otherworldly suspended quality.

Heard in: Film scores, progressive rock, jazz — Joe Satriani's "Flying in a Blue Dream", John Williams, Steve Vai.

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.