How To Spice Up Your Guitar Solos ! Modal exploration on the guitar [Phrygian Mode]
![How To Spice Up Your Guitar Solos ! Modal exploration on the guitar [Phrygian Mode]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q2HmWTSy0AA/maxresdefault.jpg)
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Take a plain E minor chord and treat it differently — not as a relative-minor chord, but as a modal one — and you unlock the haunting, Spanish-tinged sound of E Phrygian. Here's how.
What you'll learn
- Treat an E minor chord as the III chord in the key of C to get E Phrygian
- Surround it with notes from C major — no sharps or flats
- The E–F half step right at the start gives that Spanish, mystical flavor
- Ornament the chord with notes from C; try an Em → F → G progression
E minor as a modal chord
Normally over an E minor chord you'd pull notes from the E natural (relative) minor scale. Instead, treat that E minor as the third chord in the key of C — line up the chords in C and you get C major, D minor, E minor. So you surround the E minor with notes from the key of C, which is easy because C has no sharps or flats.
Run up the key of C starting on E (using the open high E string): E, F, G, A, B, C, D, and back to the octave E. Starting with that E-to-F half step right away is what makes it unique — it almost has a Spanish sound. That's E Phrygian.
Ornamenting the chord
Now play around the E minor chord with those notes. Hold the chord and raise the E on the D string up a half step to F for an almost mystical sound, then move through the scale tones from the key of C. One chord Adam likes uses an E, a B at the 2nd fret, an F at the 3rd fret — that gives the Phrygian flavor — plus an A on the G string.
Experiment at home: hold your E minor, and with a spare finger add any note that's in the key of C. To hear it in context, try a Phrygian progression like E minor → F → G.
