As the main melodic instrument, one of the most important and interesting functions of the violin is the accompaniment of the singer.
Depending on whether the singer is a man or a woman, there are pre-established 'subías', with a tendency towards the lower strings for men and the higher strings for women. But then, each person sings with his or her own personality and that is when the skills of the violinist comes into play.
The ideal accompaniment does not necessarily have to be the one that is totally in unison with the singer, but the one that manages to support and bring out the best of the singer. Usually, improvisations and modifications are made to existing 'subías' in order to achieve that ideal accompaniment. As the members of a group usually know each other, the violinist may already know how a certain person usually sings and then experiment and improve the accompaniment. This does not prevent him from being different every time and experimenting with different accompaniments. It must be taken into account that even if each person has a certain way of singing, it will never be the same each time they sing.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is when they have to accompany an unknown singer. Usually, the violinist begins the accompaniment with the standard 'subía' for man or woman and, as soon as begins to hear the melody of the singing, modifies and improvises the violin melody, or changes to a different 'subía'.
It can also happen that the same person has different singing styles and, therefore, it is impossible for the violinist to know beforehand what the singer is going to do. This is one of the most fun parts of verdiales, especially when it is an informal context in which anyone is invited to participate even if they do not belong to the group.
As has been superficially discussed above, it is common to improvise on top of existing 'subías'. But it is important to know that many of these 'subías' were invented precisely in an attempt to achieve an ideal accompaniment for specific singers. Around 70-90 years ago, when every violinist had his own style, what they really made of their own were those subías and those melodies that were used to play when someone sang. The middle fragment that connected those subías, used to be very similar or practically the same. Nowadays, with the standardisation of both violin playing and singing, that creativity has been lost. Although people still improvise and try to adapt the melodies to the singer, nobody creates a 'subía' from scratch or 100% adapted to a singer as they used to do in the past. Perhaps it is also due to the fact that almost nobody has their own authentic singing style anymore, almost everybody imitates old singers.
In brief, the standard 'subías' that are currently played and that seem to have always been there, are the result of a constant search and creation of previous violinists to make the most of their function for the singers.
Audio recording 6. Example I of accompaniment to singing.
Panda de Verdiales de Comares (1981). Panda de Verdiales de Comares. Casette. MARFER, S.A.: Málaga.