F# Gypsy Major Scale on 5-String Banjo

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

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

It is also known as the Hungarian Major scale.

Brash and colorful — a #2 crushed against the major 3rd and a #4 give it a Lydian-dominant swagger with a Romani twist. Bold, spicy, and unpredictable.

Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Bartok and Liszt, gypsy-jazz flourishes, and fusion lines over dominant chords.

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# Gypsy Major 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.