D Major Pentatonic — Oud

D Major Pentatonic is 5 notes to the octave (pentatonic family), drawn here across the Oud's CFADGC courses with every D marked, so home stays visible from anywhere on the fingerboard.

Open, sunny, and hard to play wrong — with no half steps there is nothing to clash, so every note sits comfortably over a major chord. Warm, folksy, and singable.

Heard in: Country, bluegrass, folk, gospel, Southern rock, and countless pop hooks — from "Amazing Grace" to "My Girl".

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.