B Spanish Scale on Mandolin

Play the B Spanish scale on Mandolin with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Spanish scale has 7 notes per octave and belongs to the world family.

3 of Mandolin's 4 open courses belong to B Spanish: G (the flat 6th), A (the flat 7th), E (the 4th). The D string falls outside it, and B is not available open. Open, the courses cover G3 to E5.

It is also known as the Phrygian Dominant scale.

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.

Mandolin is strung in four courses of two, each pair tuned in unison, so each stopped note here sounds as two — which is why the shape rings thicker than the same grip on a single-strung instrument.

Each position shows the scale notes and their intervals from the root so you can connect the shape to its sound, hear it with audio playback, and practice it in any register. Movable patterns let you transpose the same fingering to other keys once it is learned.

Once a position is under your fingers, link the B Spanish scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of B to start improvising and writing with it. Working a scale alongside its chords is the fastest way to make it stick and to hear how it colors a progression.