D Dorian Scale on Guitar

Play the D Dorian scale on Guitar with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Dorian scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the modes family.

Guitar's tuning sits inside this one: all 5 open strings are scale tones and one of them is D itself — E (the 2nd), A (the 5th), D (the root), G (the 4th), B (the 6th). Open-string drones cost nothing here. Open, the strings cover E2 to E4.

Minor with a raised 6th (natural 6) — soulful, smooth, and less dark than natural minor. The quintessential jazz-minor and blues mode.

Heard in: "So What" (Miles Davis), "Oye Como Va" (Santana), "Eleanor Rigby" (Beatles) — rock, blues, funk, jazz.

Guitar is tuned E–A–D–G–B–E, with 15 frets to work with.

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 D Dorian scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of D 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.