F# Gypsy Major — Oud
Hear F# Gypsy Major, then trace every marked root across the six-course reference grid below.
F# Gypsy Major is 7 notes to the octave (world family), drawn here across the Oud's CFADGC courses with every F# marked, so home stays visible from anywhere on the fingerboard.
Brash and colorful — a #2 crushed against the major 3rd and a #4 give it a Lydian-dominant swagger with a Romani twist. Bold, spicy, and unpredictable.
Heard in: Hungarian and Romani folk, Bartok and Liszt, gypsy-jazz flourishes, and fusion lines over dominant chords.
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.