Phrygian Dominant Open Position on Guitar

What is the Phrygian dominant open position?

The first four frets plus the open strings:
the place where the scale rings most with the fewest fingers.

On guitar, open position means the notes from the open strings up to the 4th fret, played with one finger per fret. Every key of the Phrygian dominant scale has one, but they are not equal: the more open strings belong to the key, the more the scale rings and the easier the shape falls under the hand.

The table counts them. E and A keep five open strings each and have the root itself on an open bass string; flamenco guitarists call them por arriba, the root on the 6th string, and por medio, the root on the 5th. F# and B also keep five, but their root is never an open bass note, and F keeps only one.

E Phrygian dominant in open position (por arriba)

Five of the six open strings belong to E Phrygian dominant:
only the G string is fretted, as G#.

In E the scale is E F G# A B C D. The open E, A, D, B and high E strings are all scale notes, so the shape mixes open strings and fretted notes all the way up. The open string to avoid is G: play G# on the first fret instead. B also sits on the 4th fret of the G string; in open position it is played as the open 2nd string, which rings longer.

A Phrygian dominant in open position (por medio)

In A the open E, A, D, G and high E strings ring with the scale,
and the B string is fretted, as C and D.

A Phrygian dominant is A Bb C# D E F G. Here the open G is a scale note, the minor 7th, and the open B is not: its first and third frets, C and D, carry the scale on that string. The root sits on the open 5th string, so the low E below it is the 5th of the key, a strong bass note under every phrase.

Open position in the other ten keys

Every key has frets 0 to 4,
but its sound changes with the open strings it keeps.

Choose a key in the player to see its open position. Keys with three or four open strings, like C, D, Eb and G, still ring well; Bb keeps two and F one, so their shape is played almost entirely fretted and feels like a closed position next to the nut.

The open strings that do not belong to a key must stay silent: rest a finger lightly on them or keep the picking hand away. The twelve blocks below give each key its notes, its open strings and its diagram.

Using open strings in Phrygian dominant melodies

An open string under a fretted melody keeps sounding:
the root or the 5th turns any line into a drone.

In E, play a melody on the G and B strings while the open low E rings below it: the root holds the key while the F and G# move above it. In A, the open A and E strings do the same job. Flamenco falsetas use this sound all the time, and it works for any style in these two keys.