Chords for Spanish Guitar Chords | 5 Chords for that FLAMENCO Sound

Have you ever wondered how guitars get [C] that Spanish [D] sound?
You haven't?
Well, have you ever wondered how they play [E] like really fast?
[Am] You haven't wondered that either?
[B] Have you ever wondered how they [F] strum [Am] chords?
You haven't wondered_ [F#] Okay.
_ [G] _ _ [F#] _ _
In this video, I want to show you five [G#] awesome Spanish-sounding chords
[Am] and the music theory behind them.
So when you play an island string guitar,
you can make things sound Spanish by playing a major [Em] scale type stuff
with these flamenco techniques.
[G] _ [C] _ [E] But that really harmonically doesn't [Am] sound Spanish
because that's just the major scale.
It's not, [E] you know, characteristically Spanish, obviously.
What does really have that Spanish sound is what we call the Phrygian scale
or the Phrygian mode.
And what makes that happen is two major chords right next to each other,
one fret apart.
[F] Here's an E chord.
Here's [E] an F chord, okay?
Now that [G#] doesn't exist in the major scale,
and that's why it sounds [E] distinct from the major scale.
We have [F] an E chord, move it up.
Just a [E] quintessential Spanish thing, right?
So if this is [G#m] our main chord on the [E] song, it's an uppercase Roman numeral one.
And [F] this would be called a Roman numeral two uppercase
with a [G] flat symbol in front of it because it's a minor [E] second away.
Well, that minor second we can put into this chord.
So here's E.
[F] This was an F chord, okay?
[G#m] We can give the flavor of these [E] two chords of the Phrygian,
the essence of Phrygian inside of one chord.
So instead of having to go
[A] or on an A chord,
and we'll [Em] show you some different variations of those things,
we can just do it in [E] the chord.
So here's an E chord and just [B] add an F note right there.
So [F#] if you can locate the root of the chord,
maybe not the low root because that might sound a little bit disruptive.
I'm putting my pinky on the third fret of the fourth string.
That's an F note.
And now we have this sound.
And so encapsulated in that chord is the Phrygian sound.
We didn't have to go E, F, E, F.
[E] And that's just a great way to dress [B] up a chord and give it that sound right off the bat.
Great [G#] to do an introduction to a [E] song with that and just kind of set the mood.
If you were going to play Malagueña,
this would be a great chord to start with just to get everyone's attention.
[A] What would that look like on an A chord?
The flat nine, if [A#] A is the root, is B flat.
That B flat would be here.
We don't want to play it [A] as the low note, right?
_ And there's that chord.
Really awesome sounding chord.
[A#] _ _
[A] _ _ We can pull this off [F#] and hammer it on. _ _ _
[G#] Now the chord [F#] I opened with was an F sharp [E] major chord.
That's really just the E chord that I played earlier, turned into a bar up here.
But what's the flat nine if F sharp is the root?
It's G, right?
Well, if I take this finger [D#] off, take the bar away,
we have an open [G#m] G string.
That [F#] is the flat nine.
[E] It's kind of built into the open [C#] strings here.
[E] And there's a flamenco form called tarantas that uses [F#] that.
Right off the bat, we hear that Spanish sound.
Another [E] common Spanish key is B phrygian.
We talked about E [A] phrygian.
[A#] We just did [A] A phrygian.
And then we had F sharp [G] phrygian.
[F#] _ B phrygian is [B] another common one because that's consistent [Em] with the key of E minor.
So it's kind of a [A] guitar key.
So here's a B [B] chord as a power chord.
Just take your pinky up.
That pinky is on the octave of the root.
Move it up one fret.
There's our C note, which is a flat nine.
Really awesome sound against that open B string. _ _ _ _
What we're missing here [E] is the third in the chord, the major third.
[B] So you could go like this.
And if you notice, hey, that's what [A] we just played here on A.
It's the same thing.
But check [B] this out.
When we have this up here on B, we get this open E string.
Not on the chord, but it's in the key.
And we get this extra dissonance there with an E note against that D sharp note.
_ So like I said, all [F#m] you have to do is play that chord one time
and all of a sudden it just sounds instantly Spanish.
One more common guitar key is the key of F sharp minor.
The five for F sharp minor would be [C#] C sharp seven.
But we can bass our song over that [Am] five chord.
Then it [G] becomes the one.
And that's where Phrygian lives.
So [C] check this out.
Here is a C chord.
[C#] Move it up one fret.
We've got C sharp.
Look what happens when we take this finger [D] away.
There's that [E] Spanish sound again.
All of these voicings, really the same thing is happening.
We have a major chord and then a flat nine, which is just a half step up,
one fret up from the root.
But each one of them has a different voicing, a different quality,
and a different [C#m] vibe and atmosphere.
[D] So it's a really awesome sound.
So you might try to add these into [C#] some of your songs.
_ _ [E] So here's a bonus chord for you.
What if you took this idea and [A] flipped it around?
So we have A, for example, [A#] and B flat.
B flat being the flat nine.
What if I take a B flat chord [D#] and put A in [A] the bass?
That's the same [Am] idea in terms of mixing [A] those two chords together.
So watch what happens when we do this.
[A#] _ That already has this sense of dissonance to it.
It wants to go [A] down there to this.
But we can take this shape, add some scale notes here with this [E] pattern. _
[F#m] _ [E] _ [Em] A few notes here [G] coming out of this box shape. _
_ _ _ _ [Gm] Look what happens when I play that chord and just kind of noodle around with those notes.
It doesn't matter what you do, really.
Land on something that sounds good to you, [A] but where I'm just going to go _
just kind of randomly hitting that C sharp note there.
That wasn't in the scale I displayed, but it is in an A chord.
So that kind of is consistent with [G] that chord.
But [Bm] even if you just [G] mess around with these six notes, it's going to sound [A] Spanish.
_ _ _ _ [Am] Kind of amazing how all you have to do is add one note to a chord,
and it instantly evokes a certain type of music.
And if you like that Spanish sound, check out my seven levels of soleá,
which is one of the main flamenco forms. _ _ _