A Whole Tone Scale on E9 Pedal Steel

Play the A Whole Tone scale on E9 Pedal Steel with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Whole Tone scale has 6 notes per octave and belongs to the symmetric family.

2 of E9 Pedal Steel's 6 open strings belong to A Whole Tone: B (the 2nd), D# (the flat 5th). The D, E, F# and G# strings fall outside it, and A is not available open. Open, the strings cover B2 to G#4.

Weightless and dreamlike — six equal whole steps with no leading tone, so nothing pulls anywhere. Blurry, floating, and faintly unsettling, like a dream sequence.

Heard in: Impressionist piano (Debussy's "Voiles"), Thelonious Monk's runs, dream-sequence film cues, and the augmented and 7#5 chords it fits in jazz.

E9 Pedal Steel is tuned B–D–E–F#–G#–B–E–G#–D#–F#, 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 A Whole Tone 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.