E Locrian — Viola

E Locrian is 7 notes to the octave (modes family), drawn here along the Viola's CGDA strings with every E named, so home is findable from any finger.

The most dissonant, unstable mode — the tonic chord is diminished (b5), making a true Locrian tonal center rare. Used for color and passing harmony.

Heard in: Metal riffs, jazz (half-diminished ø7 chords in ii°7 – V – i), horror and tension film scores.

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 E Locrian — the C string (the sixth), the G string (the third), the D string (the seventh) and the A string (the fourth) — so they can ring beneath the line as a fixed reference.

The G string is a chord tone of the E tonic triad, so it stays 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.