Eb Locrian Mode

What is the Eb Locrian Mode?

Locrian is the seventh and darkest mode of the major scale, with both a ♭2 and a ♭5 that produce a diminished tonic triad — making it inherently unstable and restless. It's rarely used as a tonal center in traditional music, but metal and progressive players lean into that instability for intense, dissonant passages. Here's how the Eb Locrian Mode lays out on the fretboard. This scale is enharmonically equivalent to D# Locrian.

Notes and Positions

The seventh mode - the darkest diatonic mode with a flat 5th. On guitar, you can treat this as both a lead vocabulary and a way to see chord tones inside common shapes. Start with one box, then connect it to the nearest root on the next string set. In the key of Eb, the notes are: Eb, Fb, Gb, Ab, Bbb, Cb, Db.

How to Use It

You'll often hear it in Metal, Jazz, and Modal. A good way to internalize the sound is to sing the root, then sing a few scale degrees before you play them.

Practice in small fragments (3-4 notes) and connect them across adjacent positions. Use the interactive fretboard above to spot repeats of the same note on different strings and frets.