A Spanish on Guitar

A Spanish runs 7 notes to the octave. Below it is mapped onto this instrument's E–A–D–G–B–E fretboard with every A marked, because what a player needs mid-number is not the pattern but where the root is when the harmony moves under it.

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.

Scale work in the armonía is for the passing figure that joins one chord to the next — a few notes at the seam of a change, played by one member while the other keeps the pattern intact.

Take it slowly against the playback until the geometry stops being geometry, then put it under a number in A and let the written line pick its own notes out of it.