F# Spanish on the Flamenco Guitar

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

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

Fiery and exotic — the b2 presses against the root while the major 3rd keeps it from sounding plainly minor. Flamenco heat with a Middle-Eastern edge: dramatic, urgent, and passionate.

Heard in: Flamenco and Spanish classical guitar, klezmer and "Hava Nagila", Arabic and Jewish liturgical music, metal riffs, and the V chord of harmonic minor.

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.