D Harmonic Minor — Cuban Tres

D Harmonic Minor is 7 notes to the octave (common family), drawn here across the Cuban Tres's GCE courses with every D marked, so home stays visible from anywhere in the pattern.

Dark and dramatic. The raised 7th pulls hard toward the tonic, and the wide step from the b6 up to it gives the scale an exotic, almost Middle-Eastern tension.

Heard in: Classical minor-key harmony, neoclassical metal (Yngwie Malmsteen), flamenco-tinged rock, klezmer, and Balkan melodies.

Three courses tuned GCE put a scale in a narrow, honest place: two or three notes to a course, no spare strings to hide on, and the G course sounding above the C beside it — so a run that looks like it descends on paper can rise under the fingers. These maps mark every root so the figure never loses home.

Practise it as a figure, not a ladder: pick four of its notes, loop them as a two-bar phrase against a slow pulse, then slide the same phrase to the next position. That is how this instrument actually uses a scale — as raw material for a repeating line.