F Whole Half Diminished Scale on Cavaquinho

Play the F Whole Half Diminished scale on Cavaquinho with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Whole Half Diminished scale has 8 notes per octave and belongs to the symmetric family.

All 3 of Cavaquinho's open strings fall inside F Whole Half Diminished — D (the 6th), G (the 2nd), B (the flat 5th) — though F itself has to be stopped. Open, the strings cover D4 to D5.

Unstable and eerie — alternating whole and half steps, with the b3, b5, and 6 spelling a diminished seventh chord in every direction. Ominous, symmetrical, and unresolved.

Heard in: Diminished seventh chords in classical and jazz, horror and suspense scores, Bartok and Stravinsky, and neoclassical metal.

Cavaquinho is tuned D–G–B–D, with 15 frets to work with. Voicings are computed for this tuning by the shared voicing generator, not borrowed from another instrument; traditional technique may still use idiomatic shapes not charted here.

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 Whole Half Diminished 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.