E Lydian on the Flamenco Guitar

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

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

Major with a raised 4th (#4) — dreamy, ethereal, and floating. Often called the brightest mode, with an otherworldly suspended quality.

Heard in: Film scores, progressive rock, jazz — Joe Satriani's "Flying in a Blue Dream", John Williams, Steve Vai.

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.