E Locrian Scale on Double Bass

Play the E Locrian scale on Double Bass with fingerboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Locrian scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the modes family.

Every open string on Double Bass belongs to E Locrian, E among them — E (the root), A (the 4th), D (the flat 7th), G (the flat 3rd). That makes ringing open notes a free voice under the line. Open, the strings cover E1 to G2.

The most dissonant, unstable mode — the tonic chord is diminished (b5), making a true Locrian tonal center rare. Used for color and passing harmony.

Heard in: Metal riffs, jazz (half-diminished ø7 chords in ii°7 – V – i), horror and tension film scores.

Double Bass is bowed, with a bare fingerboard and no fixed stops, so this is really a double-stop study: two strings at a time speak cleanly, and the full stack is rolled rather than sounded at once.

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 Locrian 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.