F Dorian Scale on Mandolin

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

2 of Mandolin's 4 open courses belong to F Dorian: G (the 2nd), D (the 6th). The A and E strings fall outside it, and F is not available open. Open, the courses cover G3 to E5.

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.

Mandolin is strung in four courses of two, each pair tuned in unison, so each stopped note here sounds as two — which is why the shape rings thicker than the same grip on a single-strung instrument.

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 Dorian 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.