C Melodic Minor — Double Bass

The C Melodic Minor scale runs 7 notes per octave in the common family. Below it sits on the Double Bass's EADG strings with every root marked, because a bassist reads a scale map as a set of targets around the root, not a row of dots.

Minor at the bottom, major at the top — the b3 keeps it minor while the natural 6 and 7 lift the upper half into a smooth climb home. Bittersweet rather than dark, with a polished, modern-jazz sheen.

Heard in: Jazz lines over minor and altered chords, film scoring, and classical melodies rising to the tonic — Bach, Mozart, and bebop alike.

The Double Bass has no frets to trust: the map marks positions on the fingerboard, and the audio is there to keep your intonation honest — match each note by ear, pizzicato first, then with the bow.

Walk it slowly against the audio, land each root on a downbeat, then take it to the progressions in C and let the scale turn into lines.