Fandangos de Huelva (4 of 6) by Jose Luis (SB Sessions)

Fandangos no.4 (Difficulty level - 5)

This is the beginning falseta from the Fandangos de Huelva on Jose's Album "10x1". It is not too incredibly difficult and it ends with a nice picado run that plays the Eb note (measure 22) outlining an F7 harmony. Let's look at a few of the outside chords and their application:

Measure 5-7: The first outside harmony that we see is the E half-diminished chord in measure 5 which serves as the ii chord from the jazz ii-V-i progression in this case Emin7(b5) - A7(implied) - resolving to D minor. The Emin7(b5) as it is also called belongs in the key of D minor.

Measure13-14: At the end of measure 13 Jose goes to a Bb chord which functions as the bV of A minor. (to find the bV substitution for any dominant chord, find the 5th of the chord and then flat it and build the chord using intervals 1,3,5 from the starting note. If we look at the spelling between the two chords this is what we will come up with:

E7(b9) Bb
(b9) - F
(b7) - D
(5) - B Flat 5 substitution (5) - F
(3) - G# (3) - D
(1) - E - (1) or Root (1) - Bb

So as we can see the E7(b9) chord shares 2 common tones with the Bb chord, the D and the F. It's important to understand the role of what are considered the "meat and potato chords" in Flamenco. We are either using a dominant V7 chord resolving to I major or i Minor, or we are using it in a Phrygian setting as the bII chord. Either way you think of it the E7 and the Bb chord are very much related in functioning as the dominant chord to our Flamenco home key.

Link to Jose’s music for download: https://www.joseluisdelapaz.com/discography

Recorded in Santa Barbara, CA by Berto Boyd for more info visit: https://bertoboyd.com/