F Phrygian Scale on 5-String Banjo

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

Not one of 5-String Banjo's open strings belongs to F Phrygian. Every note of it gets stopped, which at least means the pattern is fully movable — the same fingering carries to all twelve keys.

Very dark minor with a half-step above the tonic. Spanish, Flamenco, and metal flavor — exotic, tense, and mysterious.

Heard in: Flamenco, metal, dark film scores — Carlos Santana solos, Joe Satriani's "War", Moorish and Andalusian music.

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 F Phrygian scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of F 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.