A Gypsy Major Scale on Guitalele

Play the A Gypsy Major scale on Guitalele 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.

A is available as an open string on Guitalele, and 4 of its 5 open strings are scale tones — A (the root), G (the flat 7th), C (the flat 3rd), E (the 5th). The D string sits outside the scale. Open, the strings cover A2 to A4.

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.

Guitalele is tuned A–D–G–C–E–A, with 15 frets to work with. Guitar shapes work unchanged on guitalele — finger them exactly as charted; every shape sounds a perfect fourth higher than on guitar.

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 A Gypsy Major scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of A 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.