C# Locrian — E9 Pedal Steel
Every note of C# Locrian 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# Locrian 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.
The most dissonant, unstable mode — the tonic chord is diminished (b5), making a true Locrian tonal center rare. Used for color and passing harmony.
Heard in: Metal riffs, jazz (half-diminished ø7 chords in ii°7 – V – i), horror and tension film scores.
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.