A Whole Tone Scale on Taro-Patch Ukulele

Play the A Whole Tone scale on Taro-Patch Ukulele 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.

A is available as an open string on Taro-Patch Ukulele, and 2 of its 4 open strings are scale tones — G (the flat 7th), A (the root). The C and E strings sit outside the scale. Open, the strings cover C4 to A4.

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.

Taro-Patch Ukulele is strung in four courses of two, 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 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.