C# Dorian on the Flamenco Guitar

Where C# Dorian lies on the fretboard of a guitar tuned EADGBE, and how a flamenco passage lands it on the count.

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

Minor with a raised 6th (natural 6) — soulful, smooth, and less dark than natural minor. The quintessential jazz-minor and blues mode.

Heard in: "So What" (Miles Davis), "Oye Como Va" (Santana), "Eleanor Rigby" (Beatles) — rock, blues, funk, jazz.

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.