D Gypsy Minor Scale on Viola

Play the D Gypsy Minor scale on Viola with fingerboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Gypsy Minor scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the world family.

D is available as an open string on Viola, and 2 of its 4 open strings are scale tones — D (the root), A (the 5th). The C and G strings sit outside the scale. Open, the strings cover C3 to A4.

It is also known as the Hungarian Minor scale.

Harmonic minor with a raised 4th — two wide, yearning steps (b3 to #4, b6 to 7) give it a smoldering, theatrical intensity. Dark, exotic, and full of drama.

Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, gypsy jazz, klezmer, and neoclassical metal.

Viola is bowed, with a bare fingerboard and no fixed stops, so this is really a double-stop study: two strings at a time speak cleanly, and the full stack is rolled rather than sounded at once.

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 Gypsy Minor 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.