E Lydian Scale on 5-String Banjo

Play the E Lydian scale on 5-String Banjo with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Lydian scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the modes family.

1 of 5-String Banjo's 3 open strings belongs to E Lydian: B (the 5th). The g and D strings fall outside it, and E is not available open. Open, the strings cover D3 to G4.

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.

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 E Lydian scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of E 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.