A Phrygian on the Flamenco Guitar

Where A Phrygian lies on the fretboard of a guitar tuned EADGBE, and how a flamenco passage lands it on the count.

A Phrygian runs 7 notes to the octave, laid across an EADGBE fretboard with every A marked — the pitch a phrase keeps coming home to.

Very dark minor with a half-step above the tonic. Spanish, Flamenco, and metal flavor — exotic, tense, and mysterious.

Heard in: Flamenco, metal, dark film scores — Carlos Santana solos, Joe Satriani's "War", Moorish and Andalusian music.

On the flamenco guitar a scale is the raw material of the falseta — a composed melodic passage the guitarist drops between sung verses — and of the runs a toque answers the cante with.

Whatever notes a passage runs through, it is measured in compás: it sets off and comes to rest where the count of the palo allows, so every scale here is finally heard against a cycle of accents.