E Major — Tenor Banjo

E Major is 7 notes to the octave (common family), drawn here across the Tenor Banjo's CGDA strings with every E marked, so home stays visible from anywhere in the pattern.

Bright, resolved, and stable. The foundation of Western tonal music and the most common mode in pop, classical, folk, and jazz.

Heard in: Pop, classical, country, folk, gospel — the default major tonality of Western music.

Fifths put seven semitones between neighbouring open strings, so a scale spreads three or four notes to a string and one fingering repeats across every pair — learned once, moved sideways.

Run it against a click at a tempo where every note gets the same weight. On a banjo an uneven scale is audible immediately — the instrument gives you no sustain to hide behind.