Spanish Guitar Songs, Chords and Scales

When you take up the acoustic guitar you want to play songs, right? Maybe to sing some songs around the campfire. Lots of pop songs and folk songs sound good accompanied by the acoustic guitar but a sudden wish to play Spanish guitar songs often takes hold of you. If you can play Spanish guitar songs or Spanish sounding instrumentals it is a mark of your progress as a guitar player. This is a wish that many guitarists have but not too many know how to go about finding suitable Spanish flavored music to play.

In order to be some help to these guitarists who wish to have a serious guitar piece to play, I will throw in some suggestions. I know that many of the songs we identify as Spanish guitar pieces are fairly advanced technically but I am not going to leave any out of my list on the basis of technical difficulty. Any guitar piece you hear is probably available on tab and it is up to you to decide once you attempt to play the tab whether you are trying to play something that is too hard for you.

So when we think Spanish music what artists do we think of? There is The Gypsy Kings, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Paco De Lucia. How about Jose Feliciano. He played Spanish guitar style arrangements of a couple of Beatles songs.

Or there is Spanish Caravan by The Doors. This was actually a mixture of a Flamenco guitar style called Granadinas and a classical guitar piece called Asturias by Isaac Albeniz. The guitar playing sounded impressive on the record but it is not a great technical challenge. You can get the general flavor of the intro to Spanish Caravan by playing the B, C and D bar chords at the second, third and fifth frets. They are all the same chord shape which is based on the A major chord shape in the first position. Here is the B bar chord in tab:

e--2--------------------|

B--4--------------------|

G--4--------------------|

D--4--------------------|

A--2--------------------|

E-----------------------|

Now to get the Flamenco flavor into these chords, take the bar off and put your first finger back on the fifth string and let the first string ring open in all three positions.

So now your B chord is:

e--0--------------------|

B--4--------------------|

G--4--------------------|

D--4--------------------|

A--2--------------------|

E-----------------------|

You can also try the same technique by removing the bar from the F major shape, and moving it up the fretboard to see how it sounds.

Some popular Spanish songs you could Google are: Compostelana, La Tarara, Volver, Bomboleiro, Bomoleira, Adelita and La Morena de mi Copla. These are all well-known songs that chords, lyrics and tabs should not be too hard to find on the web.

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Music Scales For Beginners

A music scale usually refers to a progression of single notes upwards or downwards in steps. The word scale comes from the Latin word la scala which means ladder, or stairway. A musical scale is a ladder of notes that runs from the root note to the octave note (octave means eight, as in octopus, octagon, etc., therefore eight notes in a scale.)

Most beginners in music are introduced to the concept of scales very early in their training. Despite this, it sometimes takes a few years of training to get good understanding of how scales work.

A scale begins with a root, called the tonic. In a C scale (the first one most beginning musicians learn) the tonic note is C. The scale progresses either up or downward until it reaches the same note in the next octave. The C scale is an easy example. It begins with the tonic C. Going upward, the notes following are D, E, F, G, A, B and C. Downward, the note progression is C, B, A, G, F, E, D and C. The C scale has a total of eight notes. The distance from the tonic note to the next note of the same name is referred to as an octave. A scale in eight notes is called a diatonic scale.

Most modern instruments, including the piano, actually contain 12 notes in an octave. This is because semitones are included. The notes that comprise the semitones on a piano in a C scale are the black keys. A scale that includes the semitones is known as a chromatic scale. A chromatic C scale going upwards would be C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp, A, A sharp, B and C. Downward, the notes are C, B, B flat, A, A flat, G, G flat, F, E, E flat, D, D flat and C.

A pentatonic scale is scale of five notes. Pentatonic scales are not often used in Western music. The major exception to this rule would be in American blues and some rock music. They are preferred in other cultures though, such as Asian. Pentatonic scales are also common in Celtic and African music. Less common are hexatonic (six steps) and heptatonic scales (seven steps). Scales may also be octatonic (containing eight steps). These are commonly found in modern classical and jazz music.

The intervals between the notes on any scale (diatonic, chromatic, etc.) determine the type of scale. An interval is defined as the distance between two notes. They are also sometimes referred to as steps. Scales can be major (M), minor (m), perfect (P), augmented (A) or diminished (d or dim). The type of scale is determined by the size of the intervals. Interval sizes can be unisons, seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and sevenths. Major and minor scales are 2nds, 3rds, 6ths, and 7ths. Unisons, 4ths, 5ths and octaves are perfect.

Sometimes scales may be referred to as modal. A simple definition of a modal scale is a series of notes in a scale, but which lack a primary or tonic note. Therefore many scales may have several modes. For example, every major scale actually has seven different modal scales.

It can take several years of training before a musician gets a good handle on scales and chords. However, even the youngest and newest of musicians use scales and the principles behind them every day. Mastering their theory may come later. Of course, every musician knows that only practice makes perfect!

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