B Gypsy Minor Scale on 5-String Banjo

Play the B Gypsy Minor scale on 5-String Banjo with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Gypsy Minor scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the world family.

5-String Banjo's tuning sits inside this one: all 3 open strings are scale tones and one of them is B itself — g (the flat 6th), D (the flat 3rd), B (the root). Open-string drones cost nothing here. Open, the strings cover D3 to G4.

It is also known as the Hungarian Minor scale.

Harmonic minor with a raised 4th — two wide, yearning steps (b3 to #4, b6 to 7) give it a smoldering, theatrical intensity. Dark, exotic, and full of drama.

Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, gypsy jazz, klezmer, and neoclassical metal.

It has a drum head rather than a wooden top, so notes bloom and die fast.

Each position shows the scale notes and their intervals from the root so you can connect the shape to its sound, hear it with audio playback, and practice it in any register. Movable patterns let you transpose the same fingering to other keys once it is learned.

Once a position is under your fingers, link the B Gypsy Minor scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of B to start improvising and writing with it. Working a scale alongside its chords is the fastest way to make it stick and to hear how it colors a progression.