F Dorian — Viola

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

Minor with a raised 6th (natural 6) — soulful, smooth, and less dark than natural minor. The quintessential jazz-minor and blues mode.

Heard in: "So What" (Miles Davis), "Oye Como Va" (Santana), "Eleanor Rigby" (Beatles) — rock, blues, funk, jazz.

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: 3 of the Viola's 4 open strings belong to F Dorian — the C string (the fifth), the G string (the second) and the D string (the sixth) — so they can ring beneath the line as a fixed reference.

The C string is a chord tone of the F tonic triad, so it stays consonant against every degree of the scale. The C string sits a perfect fifth above F, which is the interval that makes a held open string read as modal rather than merely in tune.

The A string sits outside F Dorian: stop it rather than let it sound through the phrase.

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.