A Dorian Bebop — Viola

A Dorian Bebop is 8 notes to the octave (bebop family), drawn here along the Viola's CGDA strings with every A named, so home is findable from any finger.

Dorian with a chromatic passing tone slipped between the b3 and the 4 — eight notes, so chord tones keep landing on the strong beats in a run of eighth notes. Cool, flowing, and swinging.

Heard in: Bebop and straight-ahead jazz lines over minor seventh chords — Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and the Barry Harris approach.

Because the strings climb in fifths, one hand position covers a wide span of the fingerboard — four fingers, a fifth of range per string, and the same finger pattern repeating across every neighbouring pair. Learning a scale here is mostly learning WHICH position it wants and where the shifts fall.

Open-string drones: every one of the Viola's 4 open strings belongs to A Dorian Bebop — the C string (the third), the G string (the eighth), the D string (the fifth) and the A string (the tonic) — so they can ring beneath the line as a fixed reference.

The C string and the A string are chord tones of the A tonic triad, so they stay consonant against every degree of the scale.

Play it slowly with a long bow, one note to a stroke, and listen for the notes that pull sharp or flat against the open C and A. Intonation on this instrument is a conversation with the open strings — nothing on the fingerboard decides it for you.