E Blues — Oud

Hear E Blues, then trace every marked root across the six-course reference grid below.

E Blues is 6 notes to the octave (blues family), drawn here across the Oud's CFADGC courses with every E marked, so home stays visible from anywhere on the fingerboard.

The minor pentatonic with a b5 "blue note" wedged in — that one extra note adds grit, tension, and a sly, vocal quality. Tough, expressive, and unmistakably bluesy.

Heard in: Blues, rock, jazz, rhythm and blues, and boogie-woogie — Delta and Chicago blues, Hendrix, Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

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.