D Lydian — Oud

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

Major with a raised 4th (#4) — dreamy, ethereal, and floating. Often called the brightest mode, with an otherworldly suspended quality.

Heard in: Film scores, progressive rock, jazz — Joe Satriani's "Flying in a Blue Dream", John Williams, Steve Vai.

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.