Banjo Fills With C Spanish

C Spanish runs 7 notes to the octave. Below it is laid onto this chair's GDGBD fretboard with every C marked, because what a fill needs mid-song is not the pattern — it is where the root is when the chord changes 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.

A banjo fill is usually still a roll, with the melody notes pushed to the top of it — the scale says which notes the fretting hand can put there, while the open strings and the high drone on the short fifth string keep ringing underneath.

Play it slowly against the audio until the shape stops being a shape, then take it to a song in C and let the melody pick its own notes out of it.