Piano Fills With G# Spanish

G# Spanish runs 7 notes to the octave. Below it is lit across two octaves of this chair's keyboard with every key numbered by degree, because what a fill needs mid-song is not the run — it is which degree the right hand is sitting on 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 piano fill lives in the right hand over a left hand that never stops comping, so the scale is read two ways at once — which notes sing over the held chord, and which ones walk the song into its turnaround.

Work it over a held left-hand chord until the right hand stops thinking about the order, then take it to a song in G# and let the melody choose which notes the fill keeps.