D Blues — Dobro

D Blues runs 6 notes to the octave. Below it is laid onto this chair's GBDGBD neck with every D marked, because what you need mid-break is not the pattern — it is where the root is when the chord changes under you. D is one of the four keys a circle calls, so this one comes up.

The minor pentatonic with a b5 "blue note" wedged in — that one extra note adds grit, tension, and a sly, vocal quality. Tough, expressive, and unmistakably bluesy.

Heard in: Blues, rock, jazz, rhythm and blues, and boogie-woogie — Delta and Chicago blues, Hendrix, Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

A dobro break is slid, not fretted: the bar travels to each note, so a scale here is a list of places the bar may stop on the way — and on open-G strings, the stops that ring against an open string are the ones the melody keeps coming back to.

Play it slowly against the audio until the shape stops being a shape, then take it to a tune in D and let the melody pick its own notes out of it.