A Gypsy Minor — Oud

Hear A Gypsy Minor, then trace every marked root across the six-course reference grid below.

A Gypsy Minor is 7 notes to the octave (world family), drawn here across the Oud's CFADGC courses with every A marked, so home stays visible from anywhere on the fingerboard.

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.

Six courses tuned CFADGC give a scale plenty of room, but the honest caveat travels with every map here: maqam scales bend intervals a 12-position board cannot draw, so these positions are a reference grid, not the microtonal reality a taqsim actually plays. Every root is marked so the pattern never loses home even where the notation and the tradition part ways.

Play it as a reference, not a rulebook: the pattern gives you every 12-TET position the scale touches, but a maqam-trained ear will pull some of those tones a quarter step in performance. Learn the grid first, then learn where the tradition asks you to leave it.