F Phrygian Scale on Lap Steel

Play the F Phrygian scale on Lap Steel with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Phrygian scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the modes family.

1 of Lap Steel's 4 open strings belongs to F Phrygian: C (the 5th). The E, G and A strings fall outside it, and F is not available open. Open, the strings cover C2 to E3.

Very dark minor with a half-step above the tonic. Spanish, Flamenco, and metal flavor — exotic, tense, and mysterious.

Heard in: Flamenco, metal, dark film scores — Carlos Santana solos, Joe Satriani's "War", Moorish and Andalusian music.

It has a steel bar in place of fingers, sliding over the strings rather than pressing them down.

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 Phrygian 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.