Banjo Fills With G# Mixolydian Bebop

G# Mixolydian Bebop runs 8 notes to the octave. Below it is laid onto this chair's GDGBD fretboard with every G# marked, because what a fill needs mid-song is not the pattern — it is where the root is when the chord changes under it.

Mixolydian with a passing major 7th between the b7 and the octave — the bright, bluesy dominant sound with a chromatic slide that keeps every chord tone on a downbeat. Slick, swinging, and quintessentially bebop.

Heard in: Jazz lines over dominant seventh chords, blues changes, and rhythm changes — the workhorse bebop scale.

A banjo fill is usually still a roll, with the melody notes pushed to the top of it — the scale says which notes the fretting hand can put there, while the open strings and the high drone on the short fifth string keep ringing underneath.

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