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: one of the Viola's 4 open strings belongs to F# Dorian — the A string (the third) — so it can ring beneath the line as a fixed reference.

The A string is a chord tone of the F# tonic triad, so it stays consonant against every degree of the scale.

The C string, the G string and the D string sit outside F# Dorian: stop them rather than let them 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.