Flamenco Warrior character art

Flamenco Warrior

Before a note of flamenco makes sense, the count has to: twelve beats for some palos, four for others, and a handful of them accented. This site starts there.

The Compás The Cuadro E Phrygian Guitar Chords Guitar Scales

Free field notes for flamenco players who want to count: who sits in a cuadro and what each seat does to the compás, with chord, scale, key and fretboard references for the nylon-strung guitar — each page linked to the same page on the network hub, which is that instrument’s deep home. And each palo read as a cycle of counts, with its accents, the grouping they make and its cadence in any key.

The Seats in a Flamenco Cuadro

A cuadro can be one singer and one guitarist or a full stage with dancers and a row of hand-clappers, and every one of them is keeping the same count. One of those seats has full references here.

Flamenco Guitar

  • The toque: it states the compás for everyone else
  • Nylon strings, tuned EADGBE like the classical guitar
  • Deep home: String Warrior, the network hub

Cante, Palmas, Cajón & Baile

  • The sung verse, the clapped count, the box drum, the dance
  • No reference section here — what each one does to the compás
  • Described on the Instruments page

What Lives Here Now

The Compás

Four palos as cycles of counts: where each one’s accents fall, how they group, which palos share a cycle, and each cadence in any key.

The Cuadro

Five seats and what each does while the cycle goes round — the guitar with full references, the other four described in prose.

The Phrygian Scale

The scale most of the tradition’s melodies are built from, mapped on the guitar in every key, with playback.

Guitar Chords

Every root and quality drawn for standard tuning on nylon strings — the grips a toque holds through a run of counts.

Keys, Diatonically

Each major and natural-minor key spelled as its chords, and a plain note of which palos those tables speak for.

Fretboard Explorer

Tap a note and see every place it lives on the neck — the same shape in the E position and five frets along in A.

How It Works

1

Count First

Every palo runs on a compás, a cycle of counts that repeats under the whole performance. Before any chord, learn to hear where the cycle starts and where it closes.

2

Find the Accents

Only some counts of a cycle are accented, and which ones is what tells one palo from another. The palmas and the guitar mark them; the rest of the cuadro leans on them.

3

Hold the Chord

A flamenco chord is held for a run of counts. Learn the grip that holds it, then hear how the strumming hand places it on the accents.

A Tradition, Counted

Flamenco Warrior is a genre site in the Warrior Network. Its sisters teach instruments one family at a time; this one teaches flamenco by the thing every seat in it shares — the compás, the cycle of counts a palo runs on. It never tells you where to put a finger: the guitar’s deep home is the network hub, every seat page links to the same page there, and every table here is derived from shared, tested data rather than copied from a book.

Flamenco Questions, Answered

More on the full FAQ page.

Is Flamenco Warrior another chord-and-scale site?
No. The chord and scale references here exist because the guitar needs them; the subject of the site is the compás — each palo as a cycle of counts, where its accents fall, how they group, and the cadence it comes home on, all laid out on the compás pages.
What does compás mean?
In Spanish it is the word for a metre or time signature; in flamenco it also means the rhythmic cycle a palo is laid out on — a fixed number of counts, some of them accented, repeating under the whole performance.
Why a classical guitar?
A flamenco guitar is strung with nylon and tuned like a classical guitar, so the network’s nylon-strung classical guitar is the seat this site borrows. Its deep home is String Warrior, the network hub, and every seat page links to the same page there.
Does any of this cost money?
No. Every page and tool is free, with no ads, no account, and nothing tracking you between visits.